


Tony Stark and the Realosopher's Stone

by umpteenthwalker



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Has to Deal With Wizardry, Arthur Weasley Gets to Blow up a Toaster, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Gen, Muggle Technology, Professor Tony Stark (sort of), Time Travel (kind of), Tony Stark Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28851330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umpteenthwalker/pseuds/umpteenthwalker
Summary: Sometimes, all it takes is a second's indecision for things to go to hell. And sometimes, Tony Stark really wishes he'd snapped a moment later. In which Earth's Best Defender learns to cope with magic, prophecies and scheming dark lords, and his best friend is a sentient room that speaks like his dead AI. Post-Endgame, but with a rather large twist.
Comments: 29
Kudos: 127





	1. Purgatory 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first three lines are directly taken off the Endgame transcript.

. _. . Tony had the stones on his own gauntlet, the gamma radiation coursing through him._

_"And I," he said. "Am Iron Man."_

_He snapped his fingers._

* * *

Tony was ninety-nine point nine percent sure he was dead.

Cross that, he was a hundred percent sure he was dead, but only ninety-nine in terms of what came afterward. Because he'd been pretty sure he would wind up in hell, but he was somewhere that looked more like purgatory than anything else.

There was no infernal fire nipping at his heels. No skulls hanging from the ceiling. No demons and no screams, no signs of torment whatsoever. Nothing of what he'd expected from his crash courses on death and the afterlife, and considering the impressible database JARVIS and FRIDAY put together for him, that was saying something.

Because knowledge was power, even in death, so he'd given this damn matter a whole lot of thought. And even if not, Thor provided him with plenty of ideas on what kind of pleasantries to expect in the afterlife, and Tony knew that if anything that the guy said about his father and sister turned out to be true, he was _not_ going to end up in a place like Muspelheim without a few good buffers. Some part of him had always hoped that whatever crazy-ass heroic finally managed to kill him would be enough to appease the spirits of hell, _Hel_ , or something; ease up on the punishment and hand him a free pass, more like, but it would have to do.

"Hello," he called. (Wow, he had a voice.) "Hey. Anybody there?"

Nothing. Nada. Goose egg. Zero.

It was just him in the middle of nowhere, suspended in an empty white limbo that stretched on forever. For an idle moment, Tony wondered if his dad was too busy being roasted alive to miss out on the chance to come yell at him

 _Or maybe,_ he thought. _The geezer somehow scaled Valhalla, and it's really me who ended up in hell._

He ended that train of thought before it got too depressing.

Instead, he turned in a slow circle, drinking in the whiteness that was so pristine in its, well, whiteness that it encroached on obscene. He was half expecting some kind of elder spirit to come running up at him any moment now, laden with pamphlets that described all the perks of being dead, because even the worst kind of afterlife had to have a procedure of some sort on appeasing newly dead souls, mostly for the reason that they were . . . newly dead. He had the thought that they wouldn't take kindly to being stuck down here for the remainder of eternity, and even he was only barely managing to get used to the idea.

He cleared his throat (wow, he had a throat), and played at parlay.

"I know you're supposed to irritatingly objective," he called. "But I could do with a guide. Like, right now."

Nothing.

Maybe whatever higher being that resided over hell-Asphodel-Niflheim-purgatory operated like one of those antique shops, owned by grandfathers that had personal grudges against all things bureaucratic. Maybe they thought dead people didn't need introductions to the afterlife, anyway, because what on earth could they possibly do? Kick their ways out alive through cremated bones and ashes?

Or maybe, he thought, he just had the crap luck to land himself in an obscure pagan culture where the standard procedure for the dead was to be left stranded in nowhere, lost and confused as fuck. Which could hardly be called fair treatment—he was _Tony Stark_ —but then again, life had never been fair to him. Not since conception, and that was putting it mildly.

He raised an arm (yes, he had an arm), brushing a hand through his hair, thinking hard (and he was relieved that he was still capable of conscious thought). There was no way someplace as bleak as this space could be heaven, Christian or not, unless its intention was to trap him in eternal meditation. It would work for someone like maybe Natasha or Barton, because they were pro assassins who took the meaning of dead calm more than literally. Clint needed someone to bring him down from the whole I-give-zero-fucks outlook on life, anyway.

But for Tony Stark, walking embodiment of thoughts and inventions, this was almost a brand of hell that was too personal.

He knew one thing with certainty. If he didn't have someone or something to talk to, never mind the subject matter, he'd go from Stark Raving Hazelnuts to Stark Raving Mad in a mere matter of minutes. Seconds.

Maybe he was already there, and just didn't realize it.

He was _not_ having a panic attack in the afterlife.

"Holy spirit of Wherever I Am," he called. "I want a tour of this place! And a guide. That should be within my rights as a citizen of, uh, Wherever, don't you have a Constitution lying around this place, I could write it for you if you don't know what it is, if you just hand me a pen—"

"Hey, Tony."

He swiveled so fast on his heels that he stumbled and lost his balance.

Immediately there was a wiry arm wrapped around his middle as she hauled him to his feet. He muttered an automatic thanks, looked at her, _looked_ at her, and somehow she was more vibrant in death than she had ever been in life. She smirked in a way that wasn't just a slanted crack at mirth, as he'd grown to accept over the years, but both sides of her mouth were lifted into what was a wide grin.

He had still been keeping his fingers crossed for heaven. Or Elysium. Or Valhalla, if any of his Norse acquaintances proved themselves to be of worth and managed to pull him out of here, Wherever He Was.

But.

"Weird," he said.

"What's weird?"

"I thought it would be Thor's bitchy sister coming out to greet me in hail and thunderstorms." Tony swallowed, somehow managing despite himself not to choke on his words. "Or do you have more god in your blood than I know, Agent?"

She shook her head and smiled.

"Oh, Stark," said Natasha. "How I've missed you."

* * *

It was still him doing the majority of the talking, but she was at least listening to him.

As they walked, they were talking about this, talking about that, talking about Thanos ("hope you beat the shit out of him for me", "I'm insulted, Agent, just who do you take me for?"), but they were mostly talking after everything that happened after she'd fallen off that awful cliff, because they didn't keep her updated on anything important in this version of hell. Or purgatory. Because heaven was out of the option, now, with Romanoff down here with him.

Natasha seemed reluctant to tell him where they were, save for the fact that no, this wasn't hell.

"Oh, good," he said. "I thought it decided to disown me, for a moment there. And I had such nice plans to spend my afternoons rolling boulders and tantalizing myself over the idea of food, then shrivel down into a little flower when my sentence was done with. Or a tin can."

They shared a short laugh after that.

Tony only noticed that they were walking nowhere after minutes into his afterlife jog, maybe hours, he didn't know. How did time pass in this place, he wondered aloud, did the concept even exist? As always, Natasha cut him off before he could end up as a motherlode of questions, rolling her eyes.

Tony was a man of mechanical accuracy if nothing else, but he found that he wasn't too pissed off by his ignorance. A definite first.

Because death was doing him some good, too, and his muscles felt like they hadn't in years. On top of that, he'd somehow managed to bring his favorite black pinstripes and shades into the afterlife with him. Which really was quite fortunate, because he remembered this suit burning to its irreparable death way back when in Afghanistan.

The brogues on his feet that he'd formerly abandoned in the pits of a Siberian bunker helped, too, but he wasn't traveling down that memory lane yet. Preferably never.

"Nice shoes, Tony."

"Yeah," he said. "You're looking pretty good yourself."

Natasha grinned.

He took the chance to study his guide from a distance. Her hair was red and curling, instead of being tucked into the bleached braid he remembered. Her face was more rounded, the features soft (if such a thing was even possible). She looked a lot like when they'd first met, actually. The logical part of his brain was pulling these details apart and glue-gunning them back together into big white letters that spelled out _impossible_ in all caps.

The other part of his brain drew the conclusion that whatever newfound vigor he found in his guide and in himself, it had something to do with a manifestation of the soul.

Even after the whole Thanos shitstorm, Tony had always thought of himself as a man in his thirties. He'd only mellowed out after Morgan came along and tackled him into fatherhood. He knew for a fact that Rhodey bemoaned on a regular basis about having wanted to remain forever in his twenties; Happy thought along the same lines. Pepper had been middle-aged for four decades or so, and . . .

_Wrong memory lane, wrong memory lane._

And here he was, dumb and innocent in thinking that he could bring himself to conciliate with the afterlife. Embrace the terms of his death, forget about everything, forget about his _daughter_ , et cetera.

"There must be some kind of kick-start pack Jesus used," he said. "You think it's been three days and three nights yet? Any chance I could summon myself back into life? They haven't done the funeral yet, I think."

There was no answering quip from Natasha. No _hmm_ s, no _ahh_ s, which would still be more than anything he used to expect from her, but still, nothing. Tony stopped in his tracks at the next words that came out of her mouth.

"Tony," said Natasha. "You aren't dead."

"What."

It was proof of how much that took him by surprise that his exclamation ended up as one pithy syllable. Apparently, Natasha wasn't blind to this observation, either, because she raised both arms in an appeasing manner. It looked as though as she was trying to reign in a raging Hulk. And boy, was that a sight he missed when she continued speaking.

"You really aren't," she said. "And I'm about to prove it to you."

He thought he recognized her tone from somewhere, and after a moment it clicked in his mind. Out of all the Avengers, Natasha wasn't someone who had the proclivity to linger after a mission—most of the public cleanup was done by Tony and his brilliant, brilliant PA team, but on the rare occasions that she had to remain and deal with the aftershock of whatever disaster they landed themselves in, she used that precise tone of voice to talk to people who'd just lost their families. Their friends. She used it to talk to old ladies and sniffling girls she would have to be morally crippled to turn away from, not that he was denying her anything.

And Tony would know, because he talked the exact same way to deal with any underage Iron Man fans.

_Oh my God, was she babying him? She was babying him._

He was glad he had pockets in his suit he could stuff his twitching hands into.

"What do you mean, _I'm not_?" he said.

"You just aren't, Tony." Natasha let out a sigh, rubbing a frustrated hand along her temple. She was probably aware that he was hyperventilating, observant, sneaky little spy that she was. The nerve of her.

(Oh my _God_.)

"Look, Tony, I really can't explain it in words. For starters, I have no idea how this place functions—"

"I'd have an idea if you gave me a blueprint!"

"Or what led to you being the exception to all rules, again—"

"Or took the time to explain things for once, dammit!"

"Shut it, Stark."

He did, content with the knowledge that he was driving her more up the wall than she was driving him.

Natasha sighed, suddenly sounded very old. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Um." That question gave him food for thought. _Deep breaths, Tony._ _Deep breaths._

If he was bothered by the fact that his inner voice of reason sounded a lot like Pepper, he wasn't going to show it.

"The gauntlet, right? The snap, obviously. Me and my famous dying words and the look of utter panic on Old Blueberry's face. Wish they had a VCR here so I could record that and see it on repeat for eternity, I—"

Natasha glared. He did the clichéd little gesticulation of pretending to lock and zip his mouth.

"But you don't remember dying," she said. He could tell that she was struggling to make herself sound calm. Hah.

Tony took his hands out of his pockets and made another exaggerated gesture, moving his arms to scratch at the side of his neck. He knew for a fact that it was a nervous tick marked down in his SHIELD dossier, but by this point he was willing to let all acts and pretensions to go to hell. No Fury for the Russian to report to.

"Uh, no. I thought that had to do with the spontaneous combustion I was bound to suffer from the effects of snapping. Remember the power surge I told you about, from the gauntlet? Remember Hulk's arm?"

He paused there, lips twisting in a grimace. "Remember _Bruce_?"

It was a bad jab, and he knew it, because he was abruptly pulled sideways with his forearm in a death grip.

"Look," Natasha hissed, releasing his wrist. "Just . . . just hear me out on this, okay?"

She pointed toward something in front of them.

He blinked. Stared. There was a surface floating in nothing, for lack of a better word, shimmering and rippling like the top of a very large lake. If his eyesight was any worse, he could have believed that the entire limbo was just a big room painted white and that this was the door made out of stuffy vinyl.

Almost.

His eyesight was quite intact, and, well, the door appeared to be _liquid_. There was a distant haze of shadows that moved someplace behind it, and he could hear voices coming from the surface as well, whispers and words that were nothing more than wisps resembling the human voice. Voices that sounded very, very dead, and unreal.

Natasha must have seen his expression, because she held up a preemptive hand to stop him.

"Fact one." She folded a finger. "You aren't dead. Fact two: the Infinity Stones aren't compatible with each other. And by that, I mean fact three: they _really_ aren't compatible with each other." She paused, scratching at her own chin in turn. "I should have just stuck that onto fact two, but I how you science geeks are with numbers."

"You're getting there."

"Tony," she said. "Thanos . . . was very goal-orientated, despite his truckload of faults. He also was a Titan. Big, powerful, you get the idea. He had a purpose, a . . . distinct idea of what he wanted to do with the Stones as well as the physical body and tool to harness their energy, and even those weren't enough to stop the Stones from killing half of him."

"Well, Thor killed the other half." He crossed his arms. "You're still getting there, Agent."

"I told you to hear me out on this, okay? Aside from the fact that you're only human—and I'm not taking any objections." He hadn't been about to object, but maybe Natasha was losing her edge. "Can you remember what you were exactly thinking when you put on that gauntlet? What you think you wanted to do with the Stones?"

Tony frowned. That was actually a very astute question, because somehow, he just couldn't remember.

He thought back to his final moments. His last memories of the battlefield were fuzzy at best; it was as if he was examining something through the top of a very dirty mirror. His snap and immediate incineration should have been the freshest things in his mind, though, even in death, barring any residue of PTSD in the equation.

Weird didn't even start to describe this conversation. Everything was crazy.

"I just wanted some peace and quiet for once, I think." He thought about it some more. _Orange bits of light, Strange raising a finger, Thanos throwing him on the ground . . ._ "For the alien army to fuck off and leave everyone alone. For the Stones to blow themselves up."

"Go on."

"I didn't want to die, Romanoff. You think I'm suicidal? Is that what you're implying?"

She left the question unanswered. Wise of her.

"I told you to listen, Stark. Those are some very vague things to ask for."

"Okay," he said. "Agent, I'm too aware that I am, _was_ , only human at the time of the snap, it wasn't enough, and that this vague goal you keep talking about could have killed me. And I can't believe I'm talking about vague goals when I've spent more than thirty years out of university, dammit."

He gave her a long stare. "Is there another _but_ you haven't told me about?"

There was a prolonged sort of silence. She was definitely stalling.

He could hear the faint voice melting through the surface of the liquid door, from the liquid _mirror_ , an anxious, angered voice that suddenly sounded more real than before. Voices, to be exact, because now that he was paying attention he could discern that there were more than one. It sounded like they were talking to each other, with different lulls and halts in the conversation.

He strained an ear toward the door, but kept most of his thoughts focused on Natasha. Never mind the fact that she had on the best poker face he'd seen in his life; it would take both Barton and Bruce to crack it. Maybe a bad language word from Steve Rogers. He would know.

Finally, finally, she decided to explain herself. "Tony," she began in the quiet, low voice associated with general bad news and planet invasions, "the Reality Stone took your wish more seriously than it should have."

_What?_

"Are we talking about sentient jewelry now? Are we talking about sentient jewelry now. That's a direct trope ripped off Lord of the Rings, Agent, and as much as it pains me to say so, I don't understand."

"We studied the mechanics of the Stones together."

"Not that you understood any of them—"

"Shut up, and tell me more about those alternate timelines of yours."

"Um." He thought he'd steeled himself for any strange questions, but he hadn't expected that request. "Divergences from the original timeline, right. We had to pick exact points to travel back in time so that we didn't overlap with our past selves, avoiding the time paradox and all that crap, which was why I ended up with a mild case of cardiac dysrhythmia in 2012 and had to make that half-baked attempt at overcoming my daddy issues. It could have been worse, I think."

He was rambling.

"What if I told you . . ." Jesus, Natasha was stalling.

"Spit it out, Romanoff."

And here he could tell she was bracing herself for his reaction, "What if I told you, Tony, that instead of pulling you to a point in the timeline, that vague wish of yours sent you to a different world? Courtesy of the Infinity Stones?"

His train of thought stuttered to a stop.

"A different world where reality is so twisted, the Stones no longer exist?"

The rails promptly blew themselves up.

"But, but." The conductor of his little mental train was climbing out of the compartment and running circles on the ground, screaming his head off. Oh God. Oh _God_. "I destroyed it. Them. The Stones."

"You think you did, Tony."

"It's not just a thought, I'm a hundred and twenty percent certain that I—"

Her mouth thinned into a hard line. "For your credit, you managed to get rid of the other five."

"Romanoff," he snapped. "Natasha. I'm dead. You're dead, too, all because of some shiny stones a sadistic megalomaniac couldn't leave alone, and you're here as well. I don't see _you_ trying to talk your way out of death." He flailed his arms. "I thought this was our little reconciliatory heaven for Valiant Losers or something! Or, or Winners, since we both kicked our relative buckets at a nice age. I don't mind. Do you mind?"

She had on the impenetrable poker face again. "Who knows, Tony? Maybe I'm just a figment of your imagination."

"Wait, I can't be that delusional."

Wasn't he, though?

The poker face broke. She laughed. Pointed at the shimmering door.

"Go, Tony. My time's up."

_Time?_

"I don't get it."

"You need to go back into the world of the living, Tony." Her face softened. "Wrap your big, fat head around it, would you?"

"I . . . I don't understand."

And it was physically paining him to admit it, but yes, for the first time in the quasi-long life of Anthony Edward Stark, he understood nothing about a conversation. He was stranded in a blank space with a dead teammate, both of them saddened by death and burdened by those they had to leave behind, and after the most absolving conversation he'd had in years, she was choosing to direct him toward madness and sin.

_Again._

He was changing his mind: this wasn't purgatory. This was his own special brand of hell.

The door, the mirror, was somehow edging closer to him. Or maybe he was being pulled into it, he didn't know, he was grasping at the edge of the whiteness and talking fast—

"Or I could stay here instead, I know you think I'm annoying as hell, but hey, I'll be good company! The eternal meditation and repenting could be good for me long-term-wise, I used to learn yoga at the gym, did Happy ever tell you—"

"I said go, Stark." He couldn't even see the lines of her face anymore. "And try to remember us, yeah?"

His sight rippled into silvery puddles, their glow all but blinding. He lost the grip on one hand. Then the other.

"Nat—"

Apparently Natasha had no intention of letting him ever finish, because she raised one leg and kicked him in the behind.

He stumbled through the door, flying into nothingness.

* * *

_"_ _Use the boy . . . Use the boy . . ."_

_"Yes—Potter—come here."_

* * *

Tony was lying in the middle of an unfamiliar room.

For one short, brief second, he let himself believe that everything had just been part of a bad dream. He was going to wake up and hear FRIDAY chirping in his ears. Morgan would jump on the mattress next to him, demanding Daddy cook dinosaur pancakes for breakfast because she was in that phase all five-year-olds went through. And then Pepper would come inside the room, kiss him on the cheek, and say . . .

Oh, shit. Who was he kidding?

He looked up. He was in an empty stone chamber; there were no traces of the pristine whiteness here. More stone stretched above him, the tiles arching higher and higher into a gloomy darkness—he was sensing a historic pattern in the architecture—but there was a cold wind blowing through the dark, the underground, enough to provide him with a fresh gulp of air instead of the emptiness he'd been inhaling inside the limbo. Which wasn't much of a shock, really, because everything about today had been the very definition of unfamiliar. He had no idea how he'd managed to land himself in the Middle Ages, though.

God, he was going to _strangle_ Romanoff.

Shaking his head, he sat up, noting with a slight preen that he still had on his favorite suit and shoes. So limbo had been good for something, at least. To hell with the fact that anyone who found him here would burn him alive at the stake for the witchiness of his Tom Fords. Now, if only he'd wrangled more information out of Natasha before that unceremonious kick, he could perhaps find his way back into—

Tony rubbed his eyes. A shattered mirror stood behind him.

_Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit._

One minute in the land of the living, and he was already a vandal.

He wished he could choose to curl up and die (again), but he knew that Natasha would kick him back into the land of the living at the sight of his face. And his legs hurt like crazy.

Tony tested his weight on the soles of his feet, stood, and fell flat on his ass.

There were two other people in the room.

One stood a few feet away at the foot of a door that seemed to be fashioned out of smoke and fire, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he could see that the person was dressed in various shades of medieval and crazy. He was a wizened old man who had a magnificent white beard tucked into a belt. Tony immediately dubbed him as Gandalf inside his head, because he couldn't let his Tolkien go to waste with a perfect simile right in front of him.

Instead of a blue wizard's hat, Gandalf had on the strangest combination of clothes Tony had ever seen outside a screen, and considering what he'd been put through for the last decade or so, this was by no means a small feat. He had a cloak; a robe; and little half-moon spectacles glinted off the light coming from the flickering flame door as he turned.

A thin piece of wood was pointed at his companion, who lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, the back of his head smoking like a badly burnt potato.

Gandalf cleared his throat. The body of the blackened bald man rose into the air.

"Perhaps," he said. "You would care to explain how you came to fall out of the Mirror of Erised."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (It's almost funny, because we never do know what happened to Quirrell's body. Do they bury it? Cremate it?)
> 
> And that's that! Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated; please tell me what you liked.
> 
> On a side note, it feels so cathartic to be writing again. Stay safe, guys.


	2. In Which He Is Stoned for Life

Oh, the joys of life. Tony had almost forgotten what it felt like to be young (in the grand scheme of things), careless (possibly), without a worry in the world (definitely not) . . . and sitting in a teacher's office twiddling his thumbs like a juvenile delinquent.

He'd pulled off some questionable stunts during his last year of high school, but it had never come down to this.

After purportedly vanishing the smoking carcass elsewhere, Not-Gandalf had led him through stone rooms, more stone rooms, a labyrinthine stone corridor full of animated paintings before sitting him down in a suite that had _the_ ugliest sentient stone gargoyle marking its entrance. He wasn't sure which of the _ugly_ or _sentient_ part appalled him more, but so far it was a pretty solid fifty-fifty split. Just the fact that Tony wasn't reduced into a babbling mess at its sight showed how much Strange had polluted his perception of normality.

If ol' Doctor Doofenshmirtz was expecting a thank-you card from somewhere in the universe, he was going to tell him to shove it up his behind.

None of what he saw while walking through the hallway could have prepared him for the actual suite itself, though. Gandalf's office was a large, circular room full of little chiming sounds, as though its owner bore a personal grudge against anything somber or silent—Tony could relate to that. What he couldn't relate to, though, was the fact that these noises came from instruments lined up on the tables, very casually defying the laws of physics. Tony gave a sideways glance at the silver tools, all whirring and emitting little puffs of smoke, and filed the memory to panic over later.

"Not much of a modern art fan, are you?" he asked, studying the walls.

The walls were covered with more animated paintings. A slight difference was that there weren't any pictures of landscapes or fruit bowls in the room, like the ones he'd seen in the hallway, but plenty portraits of staid old men and women snoozing on the wall. Why anyone would want EDDs of sleeping grandparents inside their office, he couldn't imagine.

"Ah, my taste in art is often questioned by friend and foe alike." Apparently, the old man decorated to match his personality. Gandalf chuckled, sounding somewhat weary now that their trek out of Stoneland was over. "But please, where are my manners? Sit, sit."

And suddenly there was a magnificent mahogany sofa for him to sit on.

Tony blinked, inhaled, and struggled to swallow the sudden sense of vertigo piling up in his throat. _This is a magic show,_ he told himself. _Strange decided to call in his senile great-grandfather to show me some parlor tricks. This is a magic show._

Of course, then Gandalf decided to go ahead and conjure a tea tray out of thin air. Tony was close to a heart failure by the time the whistling teapot finished stirring itself. The tiny china plates filled themselves up with an assortment of cookies that would've melted the heart of a man sterner than Happy Hogan, and if the old man was trying to give him a coronary, he was doing a damn good job of it.

Tony picked up a cookie. It didn't look poisoned.

"I believe introductions are in place, first," Gandalf said, ignoring his own teacup. His hands were instead steepled against each other, the fingers long and spidery with age. A leather pouch lay in innocent juxtaposition to his thin wooden stick.

Tony was hoping he wouldn't poke his eye out with it.

"Welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is by far the best school in the wizarding world, if I may say so. I am headmaster here, and for that my views are considered rather subjective."

"Witchcraft and Wizardry, huh?" said Tony. "Headmaster . . . something? Ever heard of the New York Sanctum before?"

"Ah, most call me Professor Dumbledore. Unfortunately, I am not aware of whatever sanctum you speak of."

 _A wizard unrelated to the Sanctum._ Tony's head was spinning at a mile a minute while he digested this information, a small part of his brain listing several unpleasantries that rhymed with Dumble. Distantly, he recalled a conversation he'd had with a certain Norse deity one sunny morning:

_"Names can be powerful things, Man of Iron."_

_"Yeah," Tony shot back. "Is that why you go around shouting for everyone to hear that your name is Thor Odinson?"_

_Thor looked incredibly lost at that question, so Tony took some of the edge off his voice. He'd just been pulverized by the guy during one of their weekly sparring sessions,_ after _having been dragged out of the kitchen without his morning cup of coffee, so his temper wasn't on its best behavior_. _Tony struggled to keep the venom simmering at surface level as he said,_

_"I mean, we go around handing out signed T-shirts every other day. What's there to worry about?"_

_Thor shook his head in denial. "It is not that," he said, his voice slower, more mournful. (Thor's familial depression was at its worst because Loki Had Decided to Fake His Death and Not Tell Anyone, Again. Sometimes Tony was so glad he was an only child.) "There are certain beings in the Nine Realms that could turn the very knowledge of your own name against you. Curse you with it, even."_

_"You mean like wizards, right? Witches? Double, double, toil and trouble?"_

_"I do not understand this double double you speak of, apart from Oreos," said Thor. "But yes, sorcerers, toil and trouble. If you come across one as skilled in the craft as my brother . . ." Double winces. "You would do well to not reveal yourself entirely, Anthony Stark. I have learnt many times that even those greatest in battle are not infallible by other means."_

Infallible.

Thanos said that he was inevitable, and look where that got him.

Tony sat there in the suite, playing this conversation over and over in his mind while Gandalf—no, _Headmaster_ Dumbledore—gave him an introductory crash course on the Hogwash School of Whatsits and Whos. Tony offered monosyllable exclamations and the occasional questions in turn, nibbling on a cookie.

Then again, if chocolate chips existed in this . . . universe, whatever it was (because he still had no idea what Natasha had meant by warped reality), he had to be someplace pretty similar to his own world, right?

And Dumbledore had a British accent. Yay, Earth.

"What's the date?" he asked, interrupting the man in the middle of a lecture on something called transfiguration, the equation and properties of which Tony was immediately going to forget.

"Today is the 4th of June, 1992—"

Tony was trying very hard not to drop his cookie.

"—and I have not yet had the fortunate chance to hear your name."

Dumbledore was staring at him over his little half-moon glasses.

"Howard," Tony said, lying through his teeth. "I go by Howard Potts."

As if.

This was where he was going to have to begin treading more carefully. "And by 1992," Tony said, each word sharp and pronounced. "Am I right saying it's been about half a century since World War Two? Um, the Second World War?"

Dumbledore nodded, exuding an air of reticence at the question.

So no to _wizard_ wizards, and no to Sanctums. But yes to World War II and chocolate chips. Tony wondered what would happen if he ran to the nearest telephone booth and rang up his father. This reality thing really wasn't making any sense.

"You are well acquainted with the Muggle world," said Dumbledore.

_Muggle?_

"But have no knowledge whatsoever on the happenings of the wizarding world, and this time, I am not being subjective when I say Hogwarts is one of the most well-known institutions in Great Britain, if not the whole world. Which again leads to my confusion on how you came to be trapped within the Mirror of Erised." The old man sighed. "Forgive me, Mr. Potts, for I pride myself on being knowledgeable, but any knowledge related to this matter has abandoned me in the face of a newfound mystery. I am troubled indeed."

"Then what were _you_ doing down there in the first place?"

Tony had no right to go around pointing fingers at other people, but considering everything that had happened today, he was willing to cut himself some slack. Dumbledore didn't seem very antagonized, and that was a factor.

"Taking care of a student, as is my job as headmaster. I had just moved him upstairs when you graced us with your presence, Mr. Potts. Unfortunately, a former student of mine has . . . fallen ill, in lack of a better word, and the boy is in great pain because of this. Poppy assures me that what he needs is a few days of bed rest, and that he will make a full recovery, but . . ."

His blue eyes dropped their merry twinkle faster than someone could have yelled Hulk.

Tony considered clamping his mouth shut, ditching niceties and getting the hell out of here. For all that he knew, Dumbledore could be another sycophantic, power-hungry old man who would more than willingly rip out his heart at the chance to gain _more_ power. A bit redundant an expression, but he hadn't survived Stane for nothing.

But.

Tony hesitated. He had too little information for his comfort, and even less for him to run with. It didn't help that the only things in his pockets were his left hand and Tom Ford sunglasses, because the afterlife hadn't been so kind as to return him his cash, cards, nanotech and mansions, alright. Another perk of being, what was it? Oh, yes. Young, carefree and broke.

It was a curious sensation. Tony Stark had never been broke in his life.

He could probably invent something simple and ingenious enough to buy him a ride to the airport, but judging by the way Dumbledore had glossed over one of his earlier questions ("do you have Wi-Fi here"), he wasn't sure if the man would comprehend enough to give him directions to the nearest station. Maybe these so-called wizards flew around in brooms without any idea what miracles the backs of limousines worked.

"Um." Tony gave a disheartened shrug. "You could say I'm not from around from these parts, first, but stick with me, because I have no idea how I ended up here either. At least explain where exactly I am? If you're suspicious, couldn't you fix the glass and see for yourself?"

He pasted on a hopeful grin, the one he used on clueless reporters and one-night flings before redemption happened. Pepper would have burst a vein. And he was traveling down the wrong memory lane again.

"You are in the Hogwarts School of Great Britain, or more specifically, Scotland. The school and its surroundings are invisible to Muggles," said Dumbledore.

That word again.

The pained look from before re-entered Dumbledore's eyes as he spoke, "The Mirror came to be in my position years ago, as a part of my . . . educational succession, you could say. Last autumn, I decided to employ its secrets to keep a precious object secret. The Mirror of Erised is now broken beyond repair."

Screw it. Tony had built an arc reactor inside a cave. He would get around to fixing that mirror; he always did.

"That sounds oddly like Snow White. Are you sure I'm not Snow White? I could kiss an apple and go back to sleep if, you know, if my very presence bothers you, although I thought of myself more as a Grumpy."

Dumbledore looked as if he didn't quite understand that reference. He gave Tony a blank look of politeness as he continued: "The Mirror of Erised is . . . a curious tool. I distinctly remember placing the enchantment upon it myself, impenetrable by none other than those of the purest, most valiant mind, who would have no desire to acquire the object for himself . . ."

Dumbledore trailed off. When he looked up again, his face was more guarded than before, the lines on it harsher. "You are not in allegiance with _him_?"

Answering questions with more questions, huh. He could easily picture this man on his board of directors.

"Not sure what you mean by him," Tony ventured. "But I only work for myself and humanity. Why don't you tell me about this object, huh? What could be so important that you had to place an enchantment on an already enchanted mirror? Is it a family heirloom? A memento of your dead, drunken friend?" A morbid thought struck him red, white, and blue. "Please don't tell me it's a memento of your dead, drunken friend."

Dumbledore pulled opened the strings of his leather pouch. He shook it upside down, and a red gem fell out of it.

A red gem the exact shade and color of the Reality Stone.

If he were standing, Tony would have fallen over. (God, but his butt was already bruised.) As he wasn't, he merely knocked his teacup over as he stood, immediately backpedaling across the room and putting three feet of distance between him and the bane of his existence. For one short, nerve-racking moment, he considered jumping out the window, but he knew with certainty that he wouldn't survive the fall.

It was during moments like this that he desperately wished for the presence of JARVIS. Or one thousand feather mattresses, give or take a few.

The wizard pocketed the gem again, shoving the pouch inside one of his desk drawers. The shelf seemed to reach deeper into the floor than the length of his entire arm, which should have been impossible, but Tony wasn't tackling that problem now. He filed it away for future reference along with the odd, gravity-defying instruments, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

One hour in a new dimension and he was so, so tired.

"I take it that you have no wishes to use this, either," said Dumbledore. He'd managed to remain calm in the face of impending doom and disaster.

Tony checked the window outside to see if there were thunder and lightning. The night sky was silent.

"Use it? Why would I want to use it?" he said. Indignant, Tony pointed at the drawer, gesticulating wildly. Was he having a panic attack? He was having a panic attack. "That thing's a menace, Dumbles! Get rid of it. Destroy it with your super grandfatherly powers, or, or something. Can't believe I'm saying this, but you're a wizard."

Dumbledore heaved another sigh. "I am afraid the decision is not mine to make, Mr. Potts." His expression softened again, a ghostly light entering the eyes. "Although I have recently requested for its destruction. You see, the Philosopher's Stone was created by a dear friend of mine—a Nicolas Flamel—and I had just finished writing to him prior to your arrival."

"Creator?" Tony said. "What do you mean? The Stones weren't created by anybody."

"It was, It will take him a few days or so for dear Nicolas to pen a reply, and if my views on him hold true, he will be inclined to agree with my words. But I must insist," said Dumbledore, tilting his head in a rather owlish manner, "that you tell me of your journeys from the beginning, Mr. Potts. If I may say so, I suspect you are a highly intelligent man; surely you must have heard of Nicolas and his alchemy at some point during your education, and I am curious as to why you think the Stone itself is a Dark object."

Dumbledore spread his hands, smiling benignly.

There it was: the proffered laurel of peace. He was unnerved by how easily he'd played into Dumbledore's hands, but the man's thoughts on the Stone sounded sincere enough. And Tony considered himself to be a good judge of character; what with the multitude of backstabbing father figures and killer assistants, he'd had to train himself to be. He would eat his tie if old Dumbles was being completely honest with him, sure, but the Stone wasn't in his hands. It was in Dumbledore's.

So, after another long, long minute of contemplation, Tony decided to tell the man everything.

He started with the day in the park, when Strange had come up to him mid-jog, congratulating him on his wedding. How he was told that there were six elemental crystals that held the essence of the universe within, each Stone just as powerful as the rest.

He spoke of Thanos, the Guardians, the Avengers, Wakanda. How he'd anticipated the army's arrival for years, and still failed to protect home. The battle on Titan, the Snap, Nebula, his five years of escapist heaven.

Bruce snapping. Their last stand. The gauntlet on Tony's arm. Him raising his hand.

And how he'd woken up inside the Mirror of Desire the very next moment with no idea where he was.

"So you managed to take apart the riddle," said Dumbledore, sounding pleased. "Very Ravenclaw of you, indeed."

He thought he recalled Ravenclaw being the name of a book.

"Easy enough to guess, yeah? It's just a word spelled backward."

Tony then relayed the conversation he had with Natasha's ghost word-for-word, because if there was anything Dumbledore could help him on, it was this. He looked like a spiritual kind of headmaster, decked out with a full beard and robes.

He didn't tell the man everything, though.

There were things too twisted and complex to shorten into the length of a conversation, like Ultron and JARVIS. Then there were things he couldn't quite put down into words—he doubted anyone who didn't know what Wi-Fi was could appreciate the science behind quantum physics and time travel, even someone as intelligent as Dumbledore.

Then, there were things he just chose not to say.

(Pepper, Happy, Rhodey enclosed in a hunk of falling metal, Civil War, Siberia. Peter fading into dust, Pepper again, Morgan, Morgan, _and he was going stop right there._ )

The old man had his secrets, Tony would keep his own. Dumbledore couldn't deny him that much privacy.

A long silence followed the sudden lull in conversation. Tony took the chance to try and sip his tea, and sputtered.

Dumbledore's eyes regained some of their merry twinkle. "I put half a dozen sugars in my tea."

"You're going to kill yourself, Dumbles." Tony rinsed his mouth with another chocolate chip cookie. Yuck.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Witches and wizards lead longer, healthier lives than most. It appears to do with magical healing, although it was never an art that that intrigued me enough for a proper study, other than the few basic spells . . . Why, I myself am just a few months short of the ripe age of a hundred and eleven." A pause. "How old are you, Mr. Potts?"

"Um." Tony had to rack his head for that. Age did get more vague the older you got. "Fifty-three."

Dumbledore was leveling a look at him that was slowly becoming familiar. The man magically refilled his cup (obviously), and dropped even more sugar cubes in it. It was a small miracle he hadn't reeled over with diabetes yet.

"Magical healing whatsoever, do believe me when I say that you do not look a day over thirty-eight, Mr. Potts."

This time, Tony _did_ drop his cookie.

He'd been thirty-eight in Afghanistan. Thirty-eight when it all started to happen.

Thirty-eight.

If he could bottle up his bad luck and patent it, he would be able to turn Scott Lang into a billionaire.

He'd thought something funny was going on when he first noticed he was still wearing his salvaged suit from Afghanistan, but he would never have guessed the Mirror—afterlife—whatever—could extend this much influence over his physical body, especially since he was alive. Natasha looked different because, well, she was dead.

Maybe he really was dead, too, and everyone was pulling one over him.

 _Snap out of it, Tony,_ his internal Pepper chided, but it took him a few more breaths to gather his wits.

"The Philosopher's Stone has only ever been created once." Dumbledore continued to speak as though Tony's burst of anxiety was nothing more than a hacking cough, bless the man. "And I am confident in assuring you that its magic cannot be replicated. Nicolas used it to brew the Elixir of Life for his family; it has never harmed him or Perenelle in any way. Perenelle being, of course, his dear wife." He sighed. "My, what a terrible friend I've been to the Flamels."

"Wait, wait. Back up for a moment there. You're saying it's only been made once?"

"Yes, Mr. Potts."

"By once, meaning there's only one Stone? Period?"

"Yes, Mr. Potts. There is only just the one."

"Huh." Tony leaned back against the back of the couch. Comfy cushy thing. "So . . . there's just the one Stone, you're saying. Maybe the other five are compressed into it, or there's some other shiny jewel that holds the same power, or."

He took another sip of the tea. It was disgusting enough to take his mind off lesser matters. "This Flamel guy, he must be older than you? Any chance I could talk to him? Or at least get to study the Stone before you two go and blow it up?"

Dumbledore's face crinkled into a smile. "He turns six hundred and ninety this year, Mr. Potts."

Wow. If he really were thirty-eight instead of fifty-three, it would have hurt wrapping his head around that number. Norse gods _were_ good for things other than general mayhem and free Pop-Tarts.

He had no idea how Dumbledore could be hale and hearty at a hundred and eleven without the Stone, though. It wasn't Tony's fault his life was surrounded by people with unnaturally short lifespans; even without putting Barnes into the equation, Howard Stark would have never made a year past eighty. And Tony had died at fifty-three, too.

Well, almost.

"Remember, I'm kind of trying to deal with the whole concept of magic, here. So, the talk?"

"After listening to you, I have a few questions concerning the Philosopher's Stone myself, in fact. I will be composing a second letter to Nicolas, and soon." Dumbledore leaned forward in his chair. "You are a Muggle, Mr. Potts?"

"Hey, remember? I have no idea what that means."

Dumbledore smiled again. "A Muggle is what you would call a person without magic. I was contemplating the extraordinary circumstances of your arrival"—Tony snorted—"and came to the conclusion that our method of examination will be very different from each other. It always does good to bring a different perspective into view, but it worries me that the Philosopher's Stone will not be as susceptible to your, ah, science."

Tony shrugged. "Magic or whatever, I can read up on it. Twist a few equations here and there. Nothing a few hours can't fix." The gears in his head were already turning, the wheels clicking into place.

"1992 isn't too far off when I became CEO. I'd need an assistant, too, because I have literally zero equipment—remind me about that—you do know what computers are, right? And setting up the lab will probably take even longer, dammit—"

His heart was racing. If he could take apart the Philosopher's Stone, and he'd already hypothesized about all six of the Infinity Stones at length while building that Gauntlet, seriously, and if he could take it apart, learn from it, he could go back into the Mirror, and—

"Mr. Potts." Dumbledore was very calm. "Perhaps I should clarify. Muggle technology is not compatible with magic."

"Yeah, I get that. I can find a way around it! I wonder if I'll still get sued if I'm stealing my own inventions—"

"By that, I meant to say not at all." Tony looked up. He hadn't been aware that he was pacing a hole into Dumbledore's carpet. "All of your equipment will explode or be burned, and most likely you along with it."

What.

"What do you mean, _they're not compatible_?"

Tony was _hissing_ ; he was that pissed. He sounded near apoplectic in his own ears as he shouted, "It can't _not_ be compatible!" _Oh God, he was speaking in double negatives. A bad sign._ "I don't know how this magic of yours functions, but maybe you just haven't looked at it closely enough to find a loophole. There's always a way!"

Dumbledore stared at him in silence through the rant.

"Indeed, Mr. Potts. For those that look, there will always be a way. A favorite saying of mine, in fact," said Dumbledore, voice oddly cheery. "But will you not sit down and try more of these cookies? I chose the tea myself, but the house-elves will be distraught if they think their baking has fallen below standards."

"House-elves?" Tony squeaked. Nevertheless, he took a cookie.

(It was ginger, and to be fair, he only recognized it as a diversion a couple hours later.)

He pretended to pick at it for a while, staring at the toes of his shoes.

_Breathe, Tony, Breathe._

_I'm trying, Pep._

"Yes, house-elves. A species commonly found in older homes of the wizarding world, of which a few hours of discussion would do you good . . . But dear me, the hour is getting late." Dumbledore stood with a flourish of his hideous magenta robes, and the tea tray vanished without a trace, sans the cookies. "I must show you to your quarters."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You're letting me stay here."

"Yes."

"You're letting me, someone who popped out of a very mysterious magic mirror, stay here."

"Yes."

"Here, as in a school full of curious, hormonal teens."

"Yes." The old man was smiling.

Dumbledore was crazy. There was no other explanation. If this guy were the head of any school within a ten-mile radius of his kids, Tony would buy himself the PTA, burn down the building and dance on its ashes or something.

 _But then,_ Tony thought. _Where_ could _he go?_

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "It is now near four in the morning, Mr. Potts. Please, if you do not currently have a place of residence in mind, follow me."

He did.

As they walked, Tony asked Dumbledore where the nearest functioning telephone booth was. Dumbledore told him that he would have to walk out of the castle and out the village to trek miles across barren Scottish soil. The school train would not be usable until the end of the term, which was some days away. Or he could use a magical portal to teleport from the office, which Dumbledore would conjure in mere seconds for his guest.

Tony said no.

He couldn't believe himself as he followed Dumbledore down the stone corridor, staring at the snoozing portraits hanging on the walls. Because they weren't some advanced sort of EDDs but actual, moving portraits, as Dumbledore cared to enlighten him. Despite the snores and mutters echoing from inside the portraits, the hallways were very, very quiet for a school as Tony quickly lost himself in thought.

He was inside a magical castle. He would be living here. For a while.

Tony didn't have a choice, did he? It was best to keep friends close and enemies even closer, not that jolly old Dumbles was his enemy . . . yet. Dumbledore had the Stone on him. He could likely forget, or choose to forget, whatever promise he'd made a babbling traveler inside an office where nobody could listen in on their conversation. Then Tony would have no way back home.

Except it didn't matter. He would find a way around it. He always could. Hell, he was Iron Man.

When they arrived in front of a large pastoral painting whose frame covered the length of the entire wall, Tony was feeling significantly better about spending his next few days in this madhouse. He was told to feed the portrait a password, as it would be his only way inside.

Passwords he could cope with. They were almost normal.

As the frame swung open like any regular door, Tony turned to face Dumbledore one last time that night.

"Uh, Headmaster," he called. "Would this be a good time to tell you my real name isn't Howard Potts?"

Dumbledore merely chuckled.

"Oh, Anthony," he said. "I can always tell."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Tony thinks wizards aren't scientific enough for time travel. I can't wait to show him a time turner.
> 
> I took some liberties writing this chapter, and I hope the notes explain enough. For one, Flamel's age: we never get a precise number for how old he is, just a line from Hermione saying that he recently celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday. Keep in mind that this comes from a book that has been published some years ago, but since I have no idea when the book itself was published, well. Not a major detail, and hopefully Rowling doesn't say anything on it.
> 
> Another thing: Dumbledore is perfectly capable of digging the whole truth out of Tony and then mind-wiping him, but he doesn't. Tony has a strong aversion to people messing up his mind, nothing like real Occlumency shields, but he'd know if anyone's meddling with his thoughts, magical or not. Dumbledore skimmed Tony's mind and let him talk himself into a truce. Old Dumbles may have a manipulative strike, but he isn't that rash.
> 
> Comments make my day!


	3. Elementary Magicology, and Then Some

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note to clarify things before I confuse anyone other than myself. In COS, the entrance to Dumbledore's office is located on the second floor. In HBP, it's on the seventh. Here the headmaster's office will always be on the seventh floor, accessible through the gargoyle.

Tony spent the next day exploring the castle.

The seventh floor of the castle, to be exact, which held his new living quarters. The suite here was less airy than Dumbledore's, courtesy of a lower ceiling; Tony knew that the headmaster's office led into a separate tower, which should have been architecturally impossible, but he was willing to keep his whining quiet. For now.

He was getting his hands on a blueprint if it was the last thing he did.

The suite itself was large and comfortable, if a bit (okay, extremely) medieval for his taste, decked with a cluster of smaller rooms that folded into each other. There was a private bathroom with a real bathtub, too, which Tony took advantage of at the earliest opportunity. When he came out with his hair wet and dripping, there was a fresh change of clothes for him folded on the bedsheets. He wasn't complaining about his suit or glasses, but it did feel good to change out of them after spending a day stuck in Mirror Limbo and detention.

He shrugged on the loose black garment over his shirt, only then realizing that they were _robes_. Wizard robes.

Fetchy. If Pepper could see him right now.

Tony had been left with instructions not to wander about the castle, but Dumbledore had sent him a dozen books or so on magical history to occupy his time. As there was no AI or bot here to keep track of his sleep deprivation, he immediately sat himself down at his new desk, studying the worn leather spines one by one.

There was a square piece of parchment folded inside one of the more rudimentary volumes, on which Dumbledore assured him that the Hogwarts library was quite magnificent, possibly the best in the country. (As if they could hold a candle to FRIDAY's archives, hah!) Tony would be free to visit and check out anything at his leisure. He was free to ignore curfew, and meals would be brought up to him for the time being.

By eight thirty in the morning, Tony had paged through all thirteen tomes with an enthusiasm he usually reserved for board of directors meetings. He then spent the next half-hour chewing on eggs and bacon that, again, seemed to have appeared out of thin air. He digested his breakfast along with the texts, storing the latter far, far away from anything that even touched upon the scientific.

There were three sentences that summed up his orientation on the wizarding world.

Firstly: they were outdated.

Secondly: they were outdated.

Thirdly: no one, _no one_ ever properly studied the logic behind Muggle technology and its so-called incompatibility, and Tony was pissed to infinity and beyond by their ignorance. The most he could find on the subject was a single paragraph describing something called a Chizpurfle, which were nasty creatures that attacked electrical items when it had nothing better to do. He was fuming by the time the empty breakfast plates disappeared from his vision with a muted _pop_.

At least he knew now that the plates were being summoned from somewhere in the castle, not compressed out of thin air. It was good to know there were certain laws around this place, even if they weren't about physics.

He was going to ransack the damn library.

The painting on his door let him out easily. When he looked up at it, he noticed that the frame was no longer empty. A small brunette girl sat inside an antique cottage overlooking the grassy hill, and she was brushing the hairs of a calico cat purring in her lap.

"Hello," she said.

He stared. As he did, he noticed a tiny grass snake slither close to the cat, probably hoping to bite its teeth into warm, furry flesh.

"Um, hi," Tony said. "Do you have a name?"

The girl tilted her head. (The cat did, too.) "I don't think so."

"O-kay," he said. "Then what should I call you?"

The girl thought about it for a few minutes, shooing the snake away in a sibilant hiss while brushing her cat. The cat yawned and fell asleep. The snake wandered off in search of other warm-blooded rugs. Kids worked miracles even while they were trapped as paintings, go figure.

"People don't really talk to me," she admitted, eyes shying down to the folds of her crisp white apron. "I hung in the Astronomy Tower for years and years before somebody moved me to the dungeons. That was almost fifty years ago. I spent a lot of time visiting the Fat Lady and her friends, because it's more sunny on this floor, and I really like it."

So portraits weren't bound to the wall they were put into. No, he was not going to tackle that problem mathematically.

"Okay," he said again. "How about I give you a name. How about . . . Maya."

Hopefully, it wasn't too creepy a tribute. The girl in the painting blinked.

"Okay." Her answering smile was slow and hesitant, but just as shy. She reached down to tickle the nose of her slumbering cat. "Are you going out, mister?"

"Eh, just Tony. I'll be back in a couple hours."

"See you later, Mister Tony."

He sauntered down the hall, whistling "God Bless America".

* * *

An hour later, he was forced to admit that he was utterly and hopelessly lost.

Really, what was it with magical castles and constructions? The staircases were _moving_ , if he wasn't blind, a few walls tricking him with fake doorknobs on purpose, and the railings switched sides when he tried keeping his hand on them. There had been a dangerous moment when a step below him disappeared on the stairs, which he leaped over thanks to some quick thinking and agility. He was cursing the castle into smithereens as soon as he built himself a voice amplifier.

"Follow the wall far enough and there will be a door in it, they said," he muttered. He wanted to stomp his feet like an angry teenager, but stopped short before the idea became too tempting.

He tried applying logic. This was a school. Sooner or later, some wandering kid either ditching or taking a stroll was bound to come up the steps and find him stranded here. Except . . . this section of the castle felt oddly empty, as though the entire student population had migrated elsewhere to enjoy sunlight and warmth.

Did classes always finish this early?

 _You wouldn't know_ , a voice whispered in his mind, which sounded nothing at all like his normal internal Pepper. _Never got around to sending your kid to school, hmm? You promised her ice cream when you got back._

 _Shut up_ , he told it.

He could have spent all his day pacing up and down the corridors muttering like a madman, but his rescuer came in the form of a bushy-haired girl carrying stacks of library books in her arms. She looked to be a few years older than the girl in his painting, and a lot less keen to live as one.

"Oh, hello!" she said. "I didn't . . . I mean, I thought I knew all the professors who taught at Hogwarts."

Tony rolled his eyes. "That's because I don't teach here, kid. Can I help you with those?"

He gestured toward her books, which were beginning to resemble the marbles of a dilapidated Tower of Pisa.

Bushy flushed, nodding. "Thank you," she squeaked.

Tony took the topmost five books away from her. He observed with a note of surprise that the books were pretty heavy, heavier than anyone her age should have been permitted to hold. A quick glance at the titles proved him right; there was _Hogwarts, A History_ (the most boring book Tony had ever had the misfortune to come across, and he'd been forced to recite Tolstoy at dinners), _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ , and _Defensive Magical Theory_. _Quidditch Through the Ages_ and _Voyages with Vampires_ sounded innocent enough, so he let them be.

"Not going outside to enjoy the sun, are you?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I, um, was taking these to a friend. And doing some personal research."

"Oh, yeah?" He raised an eyebrow. "And why couldn't this friend come to get these books themselves?"

The girl looked affronted. "Excuse me, sir, but Harry's sick!"

 _Oh._ "Relax, kid. I'm just taking a jab at you."

They walked in silence together, the girl huffing under the weight of her books. Tony was incredibly relieved that she seemed to know the layout of the castle far better than him, or he might have ended up lost _with_ a crying teenager to boot. He shuddered at the thought. Which reminded him . . .

"What grade are you in?"

"Grade—? Er, I'm a first year. I turn thirteen in three months."

Not quite yet a teenager. Smart for her age, too. Tony shifted the books in his arms, reminded of another curly-headed kid who loved to hit the books. At least Peter knew how to balance academics and the outdoors, and had the muscle strength to prove it.

"Cool," he said. "Name for a name, then. I'm Tony Stark."

"Hermione Granger." It had been years since nobody gave a damn about his name, but he got that reaction now. Bushy only wore a look on her face that said she wished she could have stuck her hand out for him to shake like a well-mannered girl. Completely see-through, all of them. "Are you a visitor here, sir?"

"Mr. Stark is fine. Visitor, yeah, you could say that . . ." He trailed off. "I've talked a lot to Albus Dumbledore, anyway."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh? What about?"

They had climbed down several flights of stairs by this point. There was more activity on this floor, a rumble of voices rising from the hallway and rooms, though the corridor they were headed for was mostly quiet; Hermione had said that she was visiting a friend who was sick, and Tony guessed that was why. Why all this property if you had to be stuck in a sickbed that people could jump on every other minute?

He was contemplating how much to tell her when they rounded a corner, coming into view of what could only be the nurse's office. The doors were shut."This and that, but mainly Muggle tech." Tony made a face. "I'm hoping to do a proper study on it. Too much magic burns out batteries? What a load of, bull, um. Pretend you didn't hear that."

He was handing the first book back to her when he noticed her abrupt stillness. "Miss Granger?"

Hermione's face was going through a rapid array of expressions, moving from befuddlement, denial, more confusion, and finally settling on pure, unadulterated excitement. "Sorry, sir," she let out in a single breath. "It's just—of course I've read _Hogwarts, A History_ , but it's just about the most well-researched book out there that actually bothers to quote numbers other than Arithmancy theories, I mean, and nobody's ever told me otherwise—I could never have considered—" She cut herself off mid-sentence to calm her breathing. "You're American, aren't you? Are you Muggle-born as well?"

Tony was leaning toward the idea that Howard had some goblin blood in him, and therefore no, but he wasn't going to ruin the mood by saying something as brutal as that. The girl was obviously having a field day.

"Uh . . . yes to both questions."

"It's just," her breath caught again. "I am, too. The Muggle-born part, I mean. My parents are dentists, they're good, but in the wizarding world they have potions for anything teeth related. _And_ there are detection charms for just about any common disease, so nobody sees the value of annual checkups. Which is hardly fair, but nobody lets me say otherwise!"

She said this all very fast.

And Tony couldn't help it. He was grinning for the first time that day, ever since he'd stumbled out of a mirror without a Widow to kick him black and blue. He wasn't doing the kid any justice by thinking of her as a mini-clone of Peter, but she would never have to know that, would she? (Although they really were that similar.)

Peter had the tendency to drone on and on about his faves. He'd just unearthed the same trait in Hermione.

The girl was hesitating at the doors, obviously torn between loyalty to her friend and an interesting conversation. It was that more than anything that made her the likeness of one Peter Parker, and Tony beckoned her forward.

"Tell you what," he said. "Go talk to your friend, give him his books, take your time in the kiss and cry zone. I needed someone to show me to the library, anyway. Be my savior next time, yeah?

"And give me those."

He snatched the pile of books away from her in a surprising burst of strength and reflexes. Hermione sputtered in mortification, almost making a move to snatch them back, but seemed to remember at the last moment that it was an adult standing in front of her, so instead opted to seethe silently.

Tony tutted. Sometimes being a kid sucked, and he was drilling that lesson into her early.

"Hey, Miss Granger, hey. Don't give me that look." She stopped seething. "Is this Harry a lot like you?"

That sapped the anger out of her fast. "No . . ."

"As his friend, do you think Harry would enjoy being crushed to death by books? Wait, don't answer that." And then, because he'd spent enough time brooding in boarding school to know exactly how it felt like to be young, brilliant, and completely isolated, "Not that I wouldn't love to be, though. It would make a cool epitaph. Right?"

A smile was creeping onto her face. "Yes. I mean, no to the first question. But you told me not to answer, so yes."

"Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we have to live with what we're given. Life's charming that way." He tapped her twice on the shoulder with _Hogwarts, A History_. Oh, God. He was knighting another overeager, studious teenager. He willed away the lump in his throat. "Let's leave all the reading to you, shall we? Now shoo, your friend's waiting."

She gave him a strange little curtsy before disappearing out of sight, the mane of her hair bouncing eagerly.

He noticed that she still took _Quidditch Through the Ages_ and _Defensive Magical Theory_ with her, though. Fine. But _nobody_ was going to struggle through something as horrible as _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ in their sickbeds if he had anything to say about it. Nobody.

He walked over to a tall, bespectacled boy who was pacing the corridor, planning to threaten his way into the library.

_I'm always a lifesaver._

* * *

"Tell me why Quidditch sucks again, Maya."

The girl in question sat in her grassy pasture, this time sans the snake, brushing her calico cat like it was the only thing she knew how to do (and Tony was seriously hoping this wasn't the case). She was starting to grow on him, and he considered naming the coat of armor at the end of the hall Killian for her sake. It was loud and it was annoying. He saw no difference.

"I wouldn't know," she said. "I have no memories of playing Quidditch. But when I used to stay down in the dungeons, most people who couldn't make the team would have bad words to say. They said they were too good for it, and that it was a complete waste of their time."

In other words, she was telling him that he was fussing more than a soccer mom over a kid's sport. Tony, the founding (and only) member of the Quidditch Sux Club of Hogwarts, was not amused.

He'd spent the entire day in the library reading before being kicked out when the clock struck eight. Then he'd checked out a disappointing total of sixty-four books, even with Dumbledore's note of trust . . . and might have made a mortal enemy out of the librarian in the process.

Madam Pince had looked livid as she placed a Feather-Light Charm on his newfound collection, glaring at him like he'd been caught stealing her newborn baby out the crib. If that wasn't the creepiest metaphor he'd ever come up with for a librarian, he was eating his robes.

Oh, well. He could always just bribe a student to sneak back in there for him.

"I mean, really." He made an odd, strangled sort of noise, flipping through the pages of another book. _The Philosophy of the Mundane: Why the Muggles Prefer Not to Know_. Yeah, right. "How could there be more books on a sport that's nothing more than soccer on broomsticks than on Muggle tech? Do these people not appreciate the advancements of the 21st century, or whatever? Oh, wait, it's still the 20th . . . forget that. Fine, the World Wide Web?"

Maya hummed. Her cat meowed in answer.

He was sitting down on the floor below her frame, one elbow propped on a cushion that held the doorway to his rooms open for easy access. Every half hour or so, a pair of older kids (including the redhead who had taken him to the library) would come around the corner, jump a foot into the air, before going on as if they had been specifically instructed to ignore his presence. Even those had trickled to a stop when the hour was well past midnight. It was just him in the far end of the seventh-floor corridor, reading by candlelight.

He was taking the medieval role-play thing far more literally than he had first intended to.

"I'm not getting anything out of these." He threw _The Philosophy of the Mundane_ across the room, where it lay among other books in a discarded heap. (Pince was going to pitch a fit.) He now had a solid idea where Muggles and Muggle-borns ranked in the pyramid of magical society, thanks to some _extremely_ strong-worded writers, but was no more intelligent on ways that would send him back home.

Maya was silent as she put her cat down from her lap. "Maybe you should go to bed, Mister Tony."

"I don't _need_ bed," he snapped. Oh, God, he had a sentient portrait of an eight-year-old acting as his personal assistant. "Only if I had all my readings! And access to a semi-decent lab, it doesn't matter what century it's from. If I hadn't lucked out enough to land in a damn magical castle of all places in the continent, and if—"

He let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. _Breathe, Tony._

"I'm going for a walk."

"Don't get lost," Maya called after him. "I won't know where to find you."

Nice of her to remind him that she was nothing more than an animate object placed on the wall, but he was letting it slide.

Tony spent a few minutes measuring the front of Maya's wall in angry, hurried footsteps, cooling his head and blowing off some steam. He was not going to let himself get lost again, no matter how frustrated he was. Magic or not, the castle was too huge to go wandering about without a proper guide. It was pathetic.

He'd read about the disappearances; kids vanishing inside solid walls and hidden passageways, only to show up months later with their lives intact but half their memories missing. It was small wonder the Hogwarts death toll wasn't any higher, freak accidents accumulated during the Late Middle Ages notwithstanding, of course. But then again, the castle itself was probably sentient, which he was not eager to prove.

At least the students and teachers were under its warped wing of protection. He, a stranger to the world and foreigner in the castle, would be eaten alive by who-know-whats in a matter of minutes.

Tony felt a bit creeped out after that.

He considered visiting the headmaster's office just for the sake of some intelligent human conversation, but hesitated. The single stone gargoyle guarding the entrance was still as ugly as shit when he peered at it.

"Password?" it asked.

"Stark Raving Hazelnuts," he said. "But I'm not heading in."

He left the gargoyle spewing in indignity as he turned on his heels and walked down toward the other end of the corridor. Dumbledore had been so motivated by their late-night conversation that he'd changed the password to his super-secret lair into an ice cream flavor that came from the otherworld, as was noted in a second piece of parchment tucked into his books. Go figure.

Tony was in the middle of wearing out his legs before he realized something else.

"I am not lost," he announced loudly.

A snoozing portrait on the wall woke up at his voice. It was a picture of an old lady dressed in a shade of blue that was so hideous it would have offended Captain America's mother. "Of course you aren't, dear," she said. "Now, if you'd let us all go back to sleep . . ."

The snores and murmurs resumed filling the halls.

Even buried in his thoughts, Tony had taken special care not to venture down any unassuming staircases, because what was the point of being a genius if you couldn't multitask on your feet? He couldn't be lost, well, not _yet_. He took a glance around the hall, making sure to keep his toes angled in one direction. He _thought_ he could make out the shapes of the familiar suit of armor somewhere in the distance, the one he'd dubbed Killian, so he could creep back into his rooms without screaming for help. Probably.

"Oh, what the hell," he muttered. This time, no portraits woke.

Tony Stark, hero of Earth and defender of worlds, was reduced into a man who couldn't find his own way around a school full of pubescent kids. He could have cried, it was that funny (except it wasn't).

 _I just need to find myself a way back home_ , he thought. _A way back home . . . tools . . . a lab. Yeah, that's a good place to start. A lab. AIs and my bots, sitting in a tree, W-O-R-K-I-N-G . . ._ The rhyme was a stretch, and definitely not one of his better creations. _Nothing fancy, I'm not even asking for an Infinity Stone, just a lab where I can do some research . . ._

Tony groaned. Why couldn't life be easy for him? Why?

He'd done maybe three laps around the corridor, bemoaning his luck when his eye caught on something that hadn't been there five minutes ago.

A door in the wall.

All that time he spent quoting Marguerite de Angeli, and it decided to appear now.

 _Trick door, sentient walls, rooms that read your mind; do I hear an alarm blaring somewhere, hello?_ He knew he was an impulsive brat, which was why he'd tried so hard all these years to snuff the trait out of himself, but . . .

Tony swallowed. The shiny brass doorknob gleamed invitingly under faint candlelight. His heart was hammering in his ears as he weighed the pros against the cons as per his mental protocol when a solid stone slid into the first tray, destroying any possibilities of sensible thought entirely.

_This could be my ride home._

He seized the doorknob and pulled. And the dingy lights, the dark stone ceiling were somehow arching higher to disappear into—

"What."

He was in the basement of his mansion in Malibu.

His very, very burnt mansion and his very, very gone workshop, pale moonlight streaming through the windows. He stepped into the room as though in a trance, running his hands along the concrete walls.

There was the glass case where his oldest armor stood, systemized inactive, and all his collection of vintage sports cars, untarnished in their glory. The lights flickered on in perfect synchronization with each step that took him further into the lab. The test platform in the center was raising itself, emitting a soft blue glow that was too familiar.

He would have barely noticed when the door clicked shut behind him, if not for a crisp British voice ringing in the air.

"Good morning, sir. It is now twelve minutes past five. Hopefully the weather in Scotland will be pleasant and clear today, without the abundance of clouds most associate with the general area. If I may say so," here, the voice took on a displeased tone, "you seem to have kept to the horrible pattern of working yourself through days and nights during the extended period of my incapacitation."

Tony blinked.

And blinked some more.

"JARVIS?" he breathed. He didn't dare speak in anything louder than a whisper, lest he broke himself free from whatever illusion this was. He'd thought the room itself was impossible. It, _this_ , couldn't be.

Just when he thought his day couldn't get any crazier, two arm robots wheeled into his line of sight.

"For you, sir," JARVIS intoned. "Always."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some more faces we know. I can't believe I'm writing two thousand words a day.
> 
> Harry and Ron are good friends to Hermione, but it's my little headcanon that she is terribly lonely in her intelligence. Hopefully this relationship is a breath of fresh air to both Tony and her.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who bookmarked, kudosed, or subscribed! You guys make my day.


	4. Manifesting School Spirit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN REWRITTEN! Please read through to make sure we're on the same page before I post the next chapter. Sorry to trouble you guys.

As much as he wanted to wallow in the pits of his sentimentality, Tony Stark was first and foremost a man of action.

Whenever he hit a wall in his life (and it wasn't often, because he was awesome that way), his first reaction was to squat. His second was to check it for a secret door, because all walls were bound to have secret doors. His third was to pull every brick out of said wall and build himself a statue with it. After all, there was no problem Tony Stark couldn't solve with a bit of patience, thought and tinkering, as well as a good amount of ego and charm.

His fourth reaction, of course, was to torch the goddamn wall to the ground, because (and he was quoting the _Daily Prophet_ verbatim here) he was a crazy, obsessive and monopolistic jerk who wouldn't know failure if it hit his mother in the face with an Unforgivable.

Which was why he found himself inside Dumbledore's office again a month and a half later, nearly on the verge of yelling his head off. JARVIS was whispering urgently in his ears—"sir, need I remind you that it has been more than eighty hours since you were last asleep"—and the large bird perched atop the windowsill clicked its beak in obvious displeasure. On any other day Tony might have been impressed by the fact that Dumbledore owned a phoenix, but it was not this day.

He tapped the legs of his Tom Fords. JARVIS fell silent.

Sitting in the chair across from him was one Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, and next to him, a very, very old man none other than Nicolas Flamel himself, creator of the Philosopher's Stone. Tony felt his hand clench into a fist as his eyes fell on a bag of fine, red dust, ex-bane of his existence and one remaining curse; he had to pry his fingers open when Flamel picked the bag up, grimacing. The alchemist's movements were stiff and jerky, as if he hadn't moved in a very long time. Tony couldn't bring himself to look straight at him.

It didn't help that he was lit up blue and purple like low-budget concert lighting, as was Dumbledore.

"You're joking," Tony said. The words fell flat.

"I am not." Flamel's voice was just as wispy as his hair, which hung long and loose like the ends of a threadbare lace curtain. "The Stone's . . . magic seems to be expended. Had been so, for the good part of a month at least. It did not respond well to our attempts to dismantle it, and the Philosopher's Stone, once called the greatest creation of wizardkind, is now nothing more than a bag of dust." He bowed his head. "I am sorry, Mr. Stark, that I cannot be of more assistance."

Tony could have screamed. He could have shouted some more.

Instead, he flipped his shades back down onto his nose, breathing through his nostrils as he tried to quench the thoughts flowing in a circle of _Morgan Pepper Morgan_ inside his brain. He'd bought himself a one-way ticket away from them.

"Heart rate is accelerating," JARVIS said. He sounded more upset than an AI had the right to.

Tony dragged his hands across his face. _Deep breaths . . ._ "I hate you all."

"With a passion, I'm sure." For once Dumbledore had dropped the all-knowing, omniscient grandpa ego, instead leveling Tony with an expression that could only be sympathetic, so poignant that he could have gagged on it. "I daresay we all reached the extent of our individual abilities attempting to take apart this mystery. You especially, Anthony, as I am still amazed to see how well you have settled into the wizarding world."

Oh, but he hadn't.

Tony still had to clutch at his throat whenever he was wrenched awake from short-lived slumber, fumbling to push on the _nothing_ at his chest as pulses of light—blue, red, purple, orange, yellow and green—flashed before his eyes. Then he would spend the large part of the day holed up in his quarters or in the workshop, building nonsensical towers out of a box of scraps before dismantling everything like the ruins of a sandcastle.

Because he'd known from the beginning, hadn't he?

When he first met Flamel two weeks ago; when they shook hands, and he saw the look of pity in the man's eyes; when he caught Dumbledore and Flamel exchanging that same look over his head at their first three-party meeting; when Dumbledore had pulled him aside after dinner one day to suggest that maybe Tony should think of patenting his inventions for the long run.

When he first saw what the magic in a wizard looked like through his new sunglasses: space-blue and power-purple.

The Infinity Stones of this universe had ceased to exist a long, long time ago, vacuumed into voids and magic all over the world. The Philosopher's Stone was nothing but a fluke of Flamel's that fed on their residue and a thousand liters of darn good luck, so _he never had the fucking chance_.

Tony thought he might have laughed, because Dumbledore and Flamel were both openly staring at him.

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled. "I have serious psychological issues. You reconsidering that offer to hire me now?"

"Oh, Anthony." Dumbledore leaned forward to rest his weight on his elbows, looking enthused. "I would be a foolish old man to even think of doing so. Your thoughts on integrating Muggle inventions and magic were well received by both the pureblood circles and general public, and as you have already been exposed in the papers, it would do you more good than bad—"

"I'm stopping you right there." Tony held up a hand. "Because you and I both know I have nowhere else to go, Headmaster, and nobody's going to take my word at face value after Malfoy pulled that crazy interview on the _Prophet_ , let alone willingly buy products that have my name on them. Whose fault is that, huh?"

Dumbledore gave him a sheepish grin.

Whose fault indeed, when Tony had been caught red-handed in the Great Hall with his bots in tow the same day reporters flooded the castle for one last interview with Flamel. They also both knew that "well received" equaled to flagged as a "Muggle-loving, preposterous _American_ that somehow managed to weasel his way into Dumbledore's senile heart", as a Mr. Lucius Malfoy said, but had opted not to talk about it. Mostly for the reason that Tony was teetering on the very edge of homicide.

There was no five-star PA team here to save him from the worst of the flames. No secretary, no privacy, no fiery-tempered ex-assistant whose arms he could retreat into whenever the world got to be a bit too much of an asshole. The entire Stark name was void, and he was still undecided if he should be happy or miserable about it.

At least he could rule out possibilities of death by doppelgängers.

"Whatever, I'll stay," Tony said. "Can I leave the room though, pretty please? With a gargoyle on top?"

To his surprise (it was probably surprise, if anything after _this_ could dare faze him in the slightest), it was not Dumbledore who gave him his leave, but Flamel. "Certainly."

He was walking out of the office before the wizards could stop him. The truth was, he knew, too much of him was stuck in that zone between death and exhaustion to give a damn about where his feet were taking him, let alone some philosophical conversation he gave less than zero fucks about. He thought he heard a familiar voice calling after him ("Mister Tony!"), but when he turned, he was somewhere on the fifth-floor corridor with nobody in sight.

There was a door on the wall. It had no doorknob, no keyhole—a slab of nothing but an expanse of pure aged wood. A bronze knocker shaped like an eagle was at the space where the keyhole should have been. The door into Ravenclaw, then.

"Where do lost things go?" the eagle sang.

"Purgatory, hell, and hell again." He tapped on his glasses. "Because that's where I am right now."

"Well-grounded in experience."

He blew the knocker a kiss, turned without hearing whatever else it had to say, and trudged back down the hall.

"Sir?" JARVIS was speaking again. "Sir, you are supposed to head up the stairs, not down."

Tony stopped. "I meant to do that," he lied. Nevertheless, he changed his course of direction and hobbled up the steps like a weak old lady, never mind the fact that he was on a moving stair. He heard a row of portraits gasp as the staircase groaned under his feet and swung smack into the wall. He stumbled, but not down the stairs. "I meant to do that, too!"

Judging by the dissatisfied sniff that rang clear in his ears, JARVIS didn't buy it.

Tony was maybe on the sixth floor when he decided to spit it out.

"Looks like we're stuck here for a while, J."

A pause. "Sir, I assure you that I will be with you always."

JARVIS, bless the magical, sentient soul he was slowly evolving into, was an anchor that Tony reached out for in times of extreme distress (or every other day). Even if his codes were frozen sometime in May 2015, his last records of a short-lived conversation with Ultron, JARVIS was the best. The only.

Speaking of which.

"Didn't quite work out last time, though, did it? You didn't look so good back then, getting busted by your kid and all." It was a running joke between them, comments on their crazy wayward son. _And FRIDAY had turned out to be such a good girl . . ._ Tony let out a huff of laughter as he pulled his fingers through his hair. He was in desperate need of a shower.

JARVIS hummed in contemplation. "I do remember hearing about this, sir."

It was always _remember hearing_ in lieu of _remember_ , because magical AI or not, any events that occurred after the Ultron Fiasco had to be spoon-fed into JARVIS's archives. Even Tony couldn't prove how those functioned. Yet.

The working theory was that the room on the seventh-floor corridor had somehow reconfigured his very Muggle workshop into a chamber that sustained itself on the castle's magic, but he would need a good night's sleep and eight cups of coffee to come up with an exact verdict, because adjusting to the magical way of thinking was damn hard. It was ten times more horrifying to realize he'd have to think like that _all the time_ now.

_Stop it._

He was close to Maya's painting, walking and tripping over his own feet in a mad sort of lightness. "And then the psycho destruction bot was destroyed by an android, someone who christened himself Vision, remember? And then _he_ ended up getting destroyed by Thanos, remember? Who I blew up? Do you sense a pattern here, JARVIS?"

The AI seemed reluctant to answer. "I remember you telling me that as well, sir. However, I sense no pattern."

"Don't lie to me, J. That's not in your system."

Another long hum of artificial intelligence. "Maybe I am developing, sir. After all, we are currently stranded in _a fucking otherworld_ , as you are prone to shout out every other hour."

Tony shrugged. "Or maybe," he said, letting a bit of self-deprecation leak into his words, "I'm just a terrible engineer."

He was a terrible person and for that, he was sorry, he meant to say. Tony may have been crazy, obsessive and monopolistic, but he knew his limits. He made a bad stand-in for even Victor Frankenstein (and that was saying something), and the problem was that he was too proud to admit it aloud.

Of course JARVIS saw right through his words. "No offense taken, sir. I am concerned for your wellbeing."

"Yeah, I can at least choose to believe that."

JARVIS was unresponsive as Tony veered onto the corridor of his quarters. The familiar green tapestry came into view, and he sauntered forward to greet the small girl who kept watch over his door day and night . . .

"Maya?"

Silence. Inside the painting of the grass meadow, a little calico cat meowed.

Tony stared.

The tapestry was empty.

* * *

"Oh, dear. It's you again."

_Beep._

"And just what is that _thing_ you brought with you?"

_Beep._

"Moral support," he said.

Dum-E chirped in agreement and offered the Fat Lady a plate of scones.

When Tony had first read about the four Houses of Hogwarts, he'd briefly imagined himself as a Gryffindor, decked in robes of red and gold with a ridiculous sword to complete the picture. He loved red and gold. His armor was painted red and gold.

What he didn't love was the portrait of the Fat Lady, whom he would go as far as to say he hated with a burning passion. One reason was that she was the only painting (and only other _person_ ) that Maya had talked to before going AWOL, but didn't know anything about the girl's whereabouts. Or seemed to care, even. The girl must have fled back to the comforts of the Slytherin rooms, she told him when he first asked her about it, because he was obviously a Ravenclaw that had gone so far off the deep end that any sane painting would want to deny association by default.

The other reason was that she'd laughed at him when she caught him knocked out cold somewhere on the seventh-floor corridor. Magical Malibu—or the Room of Requirement, as it was apparently called—had low tolerance for interminable power sources as well as arrogant engineers who thought they were too smart for their own good. He'd ended up with a face full of bricks after asking it for the six Infinity Stones in a burst of rage and stupidity. He was still nursing the bruises from that.

Like it was _his_ fault magic made literally no sense whatsoever.

"Hi." Tony flashed all of his teeth in a saccharine smile. Next to him, Dum-E whirred in happiness, because now even his bots were becoming sentient from the magical wires he had reconfigured them with. _God._ "Happy to see me?"

"Don't give me that," the Fat Lady snapped. "I was hanging here when Sirius Black went to school."

He raised an eyebrow. He had no idea who this Serious Black guy was, except for the fact that his parents must have really hated him to give him a name like that, but he wasn't going to ask.

"Mm. I'm sure I have more boyish charm than him, though." He waggled his eyebrows into an expression that would have made the majority of his board of directors cower in fear. He didn't remember his face muscles being this flexible since Afghanistan, and for that he was glad. The wonders of semi-rebirth, et cetera, et cetera. "I've been gushed over so many times this week, mainly by a Professor Vector, I think it's getting to my head." Waggle. Smile.

Another blatant lie. He was scared of that woman like Steve Rogers would be of _Inglorious Bastards_.

The Fat Lady sniffed. "I still won't let you in if don't know the password, though."

"Well, technically I'll be on the staff this year."

"That should be an excuse? You could have _asked_ the Head of House before she left for the summer, you know—"

"I was . . . I was . . . distracted!" He thought some more. "By my favorite painting's disappearance!"

By receiving another face full of bricks when he wished his way back home at the entrance to the Room, more like, but he was never telling her that. Dumbledore hadn't gifted him with a novel-length backstory for nothing. As much as he was suspicious of old men with inveterate meddling tendencies, he was impressed by the guy's bullshitting abilities.

He'd gotten the hint, though. The Room didn't like supplying him with solutions that answered the hows and whys. Exactly how he expected the spirit of a high school to react, now that he thought about it.

The Fat Lady raised her eyebrows, too, in a ridiculous impersonation. "And I'm telling you _again_ that the girl isn't here."

"I _might_ know for certain if you let me inside the common room."

"Not a chance."

"Not even with a pretty please?" _Bat bat_ went his eyelashes. "I really need to finish the map before September."

Which was why he was here, nagging at an uncooperative, annoying portrait when he could have spent the whole day fixing up the prototype of his magical glasses. He hated touring the school on foot, but there were rooms and enchantments JARVIS couldn't get through on his own. It was a lot like cracking advanced firewall measures, in fact, not that they held a candle over what the pair of them could accomplish with both tech and magic on their hands.

But he kind of needed a valid excuse to go around asking people and objects alike for the deep dark secrets of the castle. He still had no idea how to get inside the Slytherin common room, because its Head was so obviously _in absentia_ until the end of the month. He supposed he could always wait, but he wanted in, and he wanted in _now._

He was so, so burning this place down the moment he got the chance to pack his bags.

"So that was your purpose!" The Fat Lady was outraged. "Had been so, all along! I knew somebody as _American_ as you couldn't possibly bring yourself to care about portraits when, when, all we do is sit, smile, and guard a door! For children! For people like you!" She burst into uncontrollable tears. "At least the Slytherins have the right idea, choosing a wall to do it instead . . . Oh dear, I'm spoiling the canvas . . ."

_Aha._

He knew he was testing her patience, but he had to find a way to wrap this up nicely. "Just once, though, as a small favor?"

Dum-E whirred in abject dejection, lowering his plate in a manner that very much resembled that of a kicked puppy.

The Fat Lady was adamant in her refusal even through the tears. "Get a Gryffindor to do it for you."

"Oh, come on." Tony grinned. Despite everything, he was enjoying himself. "I know I'll make the cut."

Or not. For all he knew, the Hat would scream "AZKABAN! _"_ before bursting into flames atop his head.

It was only after ten more minutes of hassle, blackmail and shameless flirting that he declared his supposed defeat, by all appearances retreating down the corridor as the Fat Lady yelled "Americans!" behind Dum-E and his back. He tapped on the legs of his Tom Fords as he went down the Grand Staircase, voice lowering like an evil Sith Lord's.

"You got that, JARVIS?"

"Of course, sir."

Tony blinked as a muted blue sheen enveloped his sight, windowpanes of light pulling data out of nothings and nowheres. A little prodding at the scene of their reunion had JARVIS admitting that his abilities were compromised, for lack of a better word. There was no pre-established telecommunications network in the wizarding world that the AI could upload himself onto. For all his sophistication, he should have been dysfunctional.

And then when Tony had complained in an offhand about how horrible the classification system of a magic library was, he'd announced in a monotone that Irma Pince the librarian was currently reading in the staffroom, would sir require assistance in dealing with magical books.

By the time the second week of July rolled around, he'd finished his first prototype of Project IDITH (I Did It To Hang-one-over-you, because he wasn't going to rip one off Peter, no matter where in the universe the kid was), only _the_ breakthrough of the century, capable of tracking magic flares within a hundred-feet radius.

Tony's eyes swept through barren chambers and floors to where the Slytherin dungeons would be, which he would take a crack at tomorrow. A small group of blue and purple dots littered the Great Hall for lunch. It was just him, Vector, Hooch, Argus Filch and a handful of faculty in the castle this week. Most of them were gone to enjoy the summer. And weeks of stress-free, hellion-free sanctuaries, but he could get where they were coming from.

And that was fine by him, because he didn't need any more adults on his hands than he could handle. Children wanting to figure out passwords to secret corridors and secret rooms were one thing, but him trying to crack their codes was another.

Tony was trying to prove a point. There were too many of those secret secrets hidden inside Hogwarts for anyone sane to believe that this was a safe learning environment, especially one inhabited by rug rats. The Hogwarts governors didn't buy it. Which meant that either they were all insane idiots or were dumber than most ten-year-old Muggles, in regards to safety hazards, as he told them so in a letter.

And then Lucius Malfoy had sicced Rita Skeeter on him, so they were back together at the drawing board.

He was almost on the grounds now, Dum-E following in a series of chirps and beeps behind him (how he made those wheels work on marble staircases, he was trying very hard not to scientifically consider). A painting of another dead, angry woman muttered something along the lines of "filthy Mudblood" as he passed it, sniffing in distaste. He gave her a wink.

He would never understand portraits. Like them, even.

But he knew how to talk to them, and it would be enough.

* * *

_"_ _Mum! Dad! Look, there's a new course being offered, it's been_ years _since they did that to the curriculum . . ._ "

* * *

July drifted to a close. The letters were sent, McGonagall back in the castle ("why have you been harassing the Fat Lady, Anthony?"), and Tony was now the father of a third sentient bot, this time built entirely from what he was calling magitek.

"You aren't some pirate copy I stole off the alternate version of my lab," he began, slow and calm. "Wherever did you get that idea, huh? Where the hell did you get that idea? Are you not going to tell me where you got that idea?"

Dum-E the Second whirred in denial. The First stood nearby with a fire extinguisher at the ready. It was almost frightening how much of history tended to repeat itself, because Tony could imagine this exact scene playing out some forty-odd years ago at a lab in Howard Stark's workshop.

Even after four decades, Tony built when he was pissed. Considering the fact that his not-so-afterlife was fucked up and things had all gone to shit, he wouldn't be very surprised if he ended up with an army of Dum-Es a month later.

JARVIS was simmering. "Sir, to my knowledge, no alternate versions of you exist."

"Don't care," he said. "I'm still having you do those files on the student population, look for a, um, Virginia Potts and James Rhodes first, and any family that goes by the name of Parker, Hogan, Rogers and Banner, the likes."

If he wanted to expand his archives, Tony was going to have to find his way to the Ministry of Magic, and soon.

"Getting off track here, JARVIS. Time to do a test run, ah, shit."

The new arm robot wheeled itself at breakneck speed into the new Cushioning Charmed feather couches that decorated his sumptuous workshop, courtesy of a research grant he'd gotten off Dumbledore. Tony jumped onto the bot, holding it in place as it struggled for its freedom. Why anything would want freedom in a madhouse like this, he had no clue.

"Stop, Dum-E! No, not you, I meant Dum-E the Second—Junior—Jesus, that's a mouthful. Hey, Dum-Dum!"

The bot stopped struggling. Tony let Dum-Dum go. "Be glad I don't know of a garage here I could donate you to."

Both Dum-E and Dum-Dum ran for cover behind the relative shelter of his work table, chirping and whirring in a language only they spoke. The threat was so ingrained in Dum-E's system, he probably felt terrified out of solidarity.

Tony was nodding his head like a proud father when his AI cleared his throat.

"Sir," said JARVIS. "May I recommend—"

He knew where this conversation was headed. "No."

"May I recommend," and a bit of vitriol laced into the voice. Tony would be kidding himself if he thought whatever magic that first gave life to JARVIS hadn't rubbed off on his increasingly snarky personality, "that you head down to the Great Hall for dinner immediately."

"I slept. I showered. I drank water."

"You slept forty hours ago, sir. It's not enough."

"I know that," Tony said. He was rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands again, another tick he'd gained after his sleeping patterns reverted to the shitty mess they'd been before Morgan and Pepper. _God._

JARVIS was insistent. A light on the ceiling blinked. "Sir, I would still suggest—"

Tony snapped. "Shut it, J."

JARVIS's voice was clipped as he answered, "As you wish, sir," and dimmed the room.

Tony went back to work. He should have known JARVIS wouldn't lie low after that disaster.

It might have been hours, it might have been days, but when Tony rose at last from his work-induced stupor, there was a _something_ standing before him—complete with bulbous eyes and a large, membranous head, its tiny body wrapped in nothing but a tea towel.

He thought he shouted something real intelligent like "oh my god what the fuck izzat!" before crawling backward on all fours, because the creature was wringing its . . . bat-like ears in obvious anxiety, whimpering slightly.

"Fibsy is sorry, sir," it said. "I was not meaning to upset."

It was talking.

_It was talking._

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. He could have fainted, he was that shocked.

 _Magical world, remember,_ a voice quipped in his head, someone who sounded an awful lot like Natasha.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Thought for a few moments as he put down his tools, climbed onto couch number two, and crossed his ankles in false repose. Of all the things he could have asked, the first question out of him was: "Who in the world let you in?"

_I can't deal with this._

"Fibsy is knowing of the Come and Go Room already, sir. A voice in the wall lets her in!" it (she?) squeaked. "Jar Viz is being very kind to Fibsy. He tolds me Tony Stark requires food and drink. Fibsy is happy to serve Tony Stark, sir!"

"O-kay." He was running a hand over his face again, sousing himself all over with the magical equivalent of motor oil. He was going to have the infernal stain on his beard forever. "The kitchens, huh? JARVIS, I don't believe we've ever done a scan of that place."

JARVIS took his precious time answering. "You never visited, sir."

"Well, yeah, but you could, you know, still try to tell me about them."

There was a faint hum in the air. Damn, was JARVIS sneering at him? He was going to have another artificial fiasco on his hands soon if he wasn't careful. "My apologies, sir. The kitchens are on the same corridor of the Hufflepuff dorms, and that is the extent of my knowledge."

Fibsy pulled at her ears again. "Jar Viz is very intelligent, sir!"

"Thank you, Miss Fibsy."

 _No, he's just a sarcastic little dick,_ Tony wanted to say.

Fibsy bobbed her head and did a little curtesy, her knees so thin and wobbly that Tony worried she would fall over any minute now. She didn't, though, and her face was shining like a moonstone (he was reading too many Potions textbooks) as she righted herself. "You is being very kind, too, Jar Viz, sir. Fibsy is preparing Tony Stark's meal now!"

She snapped her fingers, and a steaming platter of muffins was hovering in front of him.

Tony stared. Dum-Dum rolled forward with another fire extinguisher.

So this was a house-elf. Dumbledore had let it slip in their first late-night talk that quite a few of them lived in the castle, and he'd read about them as a species, sure, but he'd never seen them.

He'd also had his mind on a number of other things when he paged through a book that listed the magical creatures of Britain, mainly, for a way to go home. This was more Banner's area of expertise than his, if the man ever decided to pop up into existence, and with that thought his reading had taken a rather sour turn. After eliminating all possibilities of running into anything crazy and inhuman at Hogwarts an hour later, he'd pushed the volume aside to never look at again.

Fibsy chatted to him as she poured out tea, _what was it with Brits and their tea_ , pumpkin juice and hot chocolate. He was tempted to ask for a beer. Or a bottle of acid. He shooed Dum-E, Dum-Dum and the extinguishers away.

"Today's dinner was very good, Tony Stark, sir. We is wanting to spend the rest of the summer cooking and cleaning, but there is no students here in the summer that we cooks for. And Mr. Filch does not likes us house-elves very much!"

"Yeah," said Tony, munching on a blueberry muffin. "Really great. Um, and I'm not trying to be rude, but when are you going to leave?" He could tell the house-elf was freaking all three of his bots out. And him.

Fibsy tilted her overlarge head sideways. Seeming to come into sudden realization, she clapped her hands, the movement so abrupt that U swung a claw into the air. "But that reminds Fibsy! I has a message to give Tony Stark, sir!"

She handed him a piece of parchment. It was signed with a flourish, the script written in a curving hand.

 _Anthony,_ it read. _I do love Cockroach Clusters._

Tony made a face. Why Dumbledore wanted another long hour of winding, exhausting conversation when he'd had one just yesterday, he couldn't understand. He considered burning the note to ashes out of spite, but pocketed it instead. There was a theory on magical signatures he wanted to tackle. He hadn't spent all eleven years of his primary and secondary education copying Howard's signature for nothing.

JARVIS let out a very pointed cough.

"Uh, Fibsy?" Tony said.

The house-elf perked up. "Yes, Tony Stark?"

"Thanks."

He was out of the room and slamming the door shut before the squealing got more awkward.

"JARVIS."

"Yes, sir?"

"This was your plan all along, wasn't it?"

"I plead innocent to all false accusations, sir."

"Sucker."

"Thank you, sir."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems to be the general consensus that the Hogwarts school year ends on the last week of June, or during the first few days of July. The school letters are sent out sometime during the middle of the month.
> 
> Fifth time rewriting, guys. As previously mentioned, magic makes zero sense and is literal bullshit, so I had to bullshit my way around it even more to write anything. Honing BS abilities is all I got out of twelve years' education.
> 
> The witch in the painting was Elizabeth Burke, if anyone's curious.
> 
> A warm and hearty thanks to all my readers. I love y'all three thousand.


	5. Blonds, Shopping and Catfights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters one and two have been nitpicked for typos and general bad writing. No noteworthy changes, but I'm hoping that everything reads more smoothly. How things I wrote a week ago can sound so horrible now, I don't know.

Tony should have known that Dumbledore was a man who thrived on other people's misery.

But he hadn't expected himself to be one of those, well, _people_ as he stood in the front of an unfamiliar bookshop that was becoming too familiar too quick, foisted with the weight of a dozen bags that held bits and pieces of magical merch. Even with the Feather-light Charm applied on them, they were a nuisance to lug around, and a large part of him wanted to dump them in a ditch somewhere, abandon ship and crawl back into the Room of Requirement, where he would promptly set up shop and forget about the rest of the world as he tinkered with his toys.

It was ridiculous. Tony Stark had never stood in line during his entire life.

(There was that pretzel vendor down by 33rd, but hey, those were some damn good cinnamon sticks.)

He pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. Pools of color flitted in and out of peripherality, most of them the telltale space-blue and power-purple of witches and wizards but some of them just a faint orange. It was by far the largest assortment of magical energy he'd seen congregated in one place, and he thought he knew the reason why.

His gaze drifted to a huge banner stretched across the upper windows:

GILDEROY LOCKHART  
will be signing copies of his autobiography  
MAGICAL ME  
today 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

He had a bad, bad feeling about this.

"It would be a nice and easy job, he said," he muttered. An old woman pushed against him in a crazed fervor to get to the front of the line, smelling like a pungent mix of perfume, powder and firewhisky. _God._ "Find Lockhart, give him the letter and get the hell out of there, he said."

"Your précis is most incorrect, sir."

"Shush, J."

Dumbledore had called him up to the headmaster's office two days ago to check up on him, by all pretense, chatting about nothings and offering some more of those house-elf cookies before beating right through the bush to ask if Anthony had plans on Wednesday, and if not, could he find time to deliver a letter to one Gilderoy Lockhart, please. Tony hated the idea of playing messenger for some asshole that couldn't be bothered to check his own mail, but in a vague way he was reminded of himself ("what's your social security number?") and ol' Dumbles had guilt-tripped him over the research grant into running along without further objection. To his credit, he managed to put off thinking about it until noon today.

He hated Diagon Alley. Everything about it was so familial that he felt like dying all over again.

Although he really could use a wand if he wanted to go around masquerading as a wizard any longer, and shopping for wizard robes had been somewhat fun. They clashed against his new suit collection horribly. _Not that I'm enjoying it,_ he thought.

Tony was trying his darnedest to remember that yes, he'd agreed to do this, and yes, he was working for a boss that he at least had to pretend to listen to now (wasn't that a ridiculous idea) as he took deep, calming breaths while being squashed like a pack of sardines between giggling women.

"Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!"

Tony turned. There was a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, who was waving her arm at him from somewhere in the back. A gaggle of redheads were lined up in front of her, along with a man and a woman who were obviously her parents. He thought he recognized a face, but couldn't be sure. The family looked like peas out of a pod with identical shades of red hair, freckles, and slightly worn clothes.

He walked over to them, bunching up his robes at the hip to keep other people from tripping up on them. He had on a double-breasted, very Muggle suit underneath them, but he was much better off than the witches sweltering under layers and layers from the late summer heat, and was that an authentic corset he saw on that blonde, Holy Mother of God.

"Miss Granger," he said. He pocketed his shades.

Hermione was beaming. "I'm so surprised to see you here! I thought you'd be leaving once your research was done, I mean, your name made the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ nine times last month—oh, but where are my manners." She blushed, smoothing down her hair. The strands still stuck out like the coils on a spring.

"These are my parents, and the Weasleys, and Harry, who's in Ron and my year at school. This is Professor Stark, everybody. He'll be teaching—er, it's Muggle Intercommunal Technology, isn't it?"

Tony flashed them his best smile. "It's Tony Stark," he said. "And that's MIT for you. I love my acronyms."

Those same acronyms were what kept him afloat in a world of witchcraft and wizardry with his rationality intact. He stuck out a hand for each of them to shake, and there was a brief moment of confusion when he thought one of the Weasleys was coming back for more before realizing that there must be a twin in the family.

"Tony Stark?" someone said. "Not _the_ Tony Stark?"

It was the older redheaded man. Mr. Weasley was thoroughly glowing with anticipation as he pushed aside one of the twins from a shelf stacked high with suspicious books ( _Abracadabra: An A-Z of Spooky Spells_ ), babbling in excitement.

"Fascinating, fascinating. I've read all about you, of course—mentioned nine times in the _Prophet_ , as Hermione was so astute as to point out"—Hermione blushed—"but to meet you in person, really! You are from America? And Muggle-born?"

The man beamed.

Tony Stark had been dealing with overeager fans since he was six. Everything he did was public knowledge, every detail gushed over or admonished, and as he grew older every invention he made had their names known alongside his, too, first on magazine covers and later on the news. He was a man who _breathed_ attention, but he thought he'd lost all ability to appreciate publicity for what it was after years of tabloids, false rumors, and general public hatred.

Naturally, he preened.

"Yep, that's me," he crowed. "Tony Stark. My dad was . . . kind of familiar with magic, though." He thought about it for a moment. Howard would classify as a wizard in anyone's eyes. "But yes, I _am_ heads over heels for Muggle tech, if that's what you're getting at. And proud of it, too."

Mr. Weasley beamed some more. "The name's Arthur Weasley." Another handshake. "I work at the Ministry, you know, the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. Bewitching things that are Muggle-made in case something ends up back in a Muggle shop or house—can't hold a candle to anything you've done, of course—but your theory on combining the flow of magical energy and eckeltricity are most amazing! We really must have a cup of tea together sometime, I live in Devon—"

Mrs. Weasley cleared her throat. Arthur fell silent.

Molly Weasley was a short, plump, kind-faced woman with frizzy red hair, as though she couldn't find enough time to sit down and and brush it in the mornings. "Yes, yes, we've _both_ heard about you," she said, stressing the word. Her husband flushed a deep scarlet. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Stark. I think it'll do the children some good to have a class that touches more on modern history and Muggles. Most pure-bloods haven't got any clue about them. I was surprised you didn't assign them a textbook, though . . ."

Tony's easy grin faltered. The Weasleys apparently had some strong preconceived notions about quality education, likely from their combined years at Hogwarts School. But there were two weeks left until the first day of term and he still had zero ideas on what he was _actually_ going to teach the rug rats.

He had also very ostensibly failed to turn in a lesson plan. McGonagall was going to skin him alive.

Molly gestured toward one of the younger children, who stuck out like a sore thumb with his black hair among a family of redheads. "Why, Harry here says that he went on the Underground to get to Diagon Alley last year!"

Tony spared Harry a glance. "Underground, huh? Your parents Muggles?"

Harry started. "What? No, er, I mean, they were both magic—"

"What, you don't know?" said the boy next to him.

Molly gave her son a very pointed stare. And it was like watching somebody steer a conversation by the literal reins, because she was pulling a shy ginger girl out from somewhere behind her back. "What wonderful coincidence. My youngest will be new at Hogwarts this year, too. She's the last in our family."

She gave her a little nudge with an elbow. "Why don't you introduce yourself, dear?"

"Ginny Weasley," her daughter squeaked.

Tony gave the poor girl a thumbs-up. Ginny blushed to the roots of her hair and disappeared behind her mother again, mumbling something about how "it was nice meeting you" and that she "looked forward to his classes".

"Mum," said one of the twins. "Ginny can't be friends with a _professor_."

The other snickered. "Yeah, she's going to catch a ride with the famous Harry Potter."

"The one and only!" they chorused. He thought he saw Harry scowl out of the corner of his eyes.

"Excuse me, did you say Harry Potter?"

They had reached the front of the line. A blond man wearing robes of a pale blue that matched the color of his eyes stepped around the table, a pointed wizard's hat drooping on his head; his teeth were a perfect, pristine white that would have given Captain America a run for his money. The crowd parted to let him through, whispering excitedly.

"It can't be Harry Potter?" said Blondie. The wizard dived forward and seized Harry's arm. "Harry—come here, come here, ladies and gentlemen, please let him through—Harry here has had a terrible, heart-rending past, and it wouldn't do well to touch him without warning—"

This time, Tony _did_ see Harry scowling something fierce. It was a mild surprise considering how quiet and withdrawn the kid seemed to be. Maybe he was shy, maybe he had an alter ego, maybe he had a grudge.

Tony stepped in for the rescue.

"Hi, Gilderoy," he said. "Are you Gilderoy?"

The man turned, smile still plastered on his face. "Excuse me?"

There was a second wizard who was slinking by, closer to the table that was practically encrusted by books. He held a big black camera in his hands. The contraption emitted little puffs of smoke with every click that it made.

"Are _you_ Gilderoy?" Tony asked, facing him. "And is that camera legal?"

"What?" The photographer blinked. "No!"

"It's not legal, then?" Tony's own smile was beginning to show hints of teeth. "Okay, Gilderoy, we have a problem. Apart from the fact that we haven't been properly introduced, see, I'm here on school business." His grin widened further. He was definitely showing teeth, now. "Dumbledore's orders."

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

"School business?"

"What's this about Dumbledore?"

"Is he in _trouble_?"

The real Lockhart's smile was looking a bit frayed around the edges. "Oh, dear. Stealing my thunder." He ran a hand through his oh-so-perfect, golden hair before raising his voice, making himself heard again. "Yes, yes! I almost forgot to announce. Ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

The murmurs intensified.

(With more than a hint of unease, Tony realized that this must be exactly how _he'd_ been like when he was fifteen, stupid, and drunk as a skunk at an older girl's party, trying very hard to impress people as he stuttered over two-syllable words.)

"Harry, Harry. What an extraordinary moment this is!" Lockhart wasn't shaken off easily, man had to be handed that much. "Natural wanting to meet me, of course, as fellow contenders for fame—me, Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award and _the epitome of popularity_ —but let's not talk about that. I wasn't the one who vanished He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and as a mere one-year-old baby!"

Harry looked murderous. Tony was thinking, and thinking hard, when all of a sudden, everything clicked.

_"Dark Arts?" Tony scratched his chin. "You're kidding me, right? Dark Arts. Why is it the Dark Arts?Do they have Squidward living here, JARVIS? I wanted to learn the force choke from him."_

_"The Giant Squid resides at the bottom of the lake, sir."_

_Lying with both feet propped up on his bed's headboard, he was parsing through a holographic copy of_ The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts _, which JARVIS had scanned from the library for him (Tony really needed to start thinking about building a proper magical base to operate from). The majority of wizard history books tended to be long, dull accounts that repeated themselves in endless loops of Muggles, murder, more Muggles, until when something called the Statute of Secrecy was instituted, which was then broken multiple times, leading to more Muggles, more murder and mayhem, overall._

_He yawned. He was running on two hours of sleep and zero caffeine, so the book could wait a few more days. All it had to say on Dark Magic was that it was evil, unorthodox, and powerful, although none of these Dark witches and wizards ever seemed to be able to retain power outside their borders, apart from one case of Gellert Grindelwald. Overlords trying to take over the government happened all the time in the Muggle world. Big deal._

_It was only when he waved a hand to close the book that he looked at the page he was supposed to be reading._

_"JARVIS," he said. "What kind of a lousy title is He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?"_

_The AI hummed in acknowledgement. "A euphemism for Lord Voldemort, sir. Voldemort appears to be French."_

_"Well, yeah. His parents would have to be off their rockers to name him something like that." Tony snorted. He'd faced Loki, Ultron, Thanos and was afraid of a lot of things, but he'd never once been scared of_ a name _. "Although considering what they say about Dark wizards and how they spring crazy from the womb, it's a chance."_

_He looked at the page one more time, erased it from memory, then started reading up on jinxes and counter-jinxes._

Hermione had a friend named Harry. James and Lily Potter had a son named Harry, who they went into hiding for about twelve years ago. There was one Harry in the group of rising second years at Hogwarts.

_"I wasn't the one who vanished He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and as a mere one-year-old baby!"_

James and Lily Potter were also very, very dead.

Tony was _this_ close to snapping something, and it wasn't an Infinity Stone.

"Of course, there's nothing to worry about." Somehow, Lockhart was still prattling on without a clue. "Shouldn't be too much trouble, in fact, I am enthralled to have the chance to guide you on a path of fame and glory, Harry, you and I will get along fabulously—"

Tony walked forward, put a hand in his pocket, and slapped the envelope onto a copy of _Magical Me_.

"Your letter, _Professor_ Lockhart," he said, "from _Headmaster_ Dumbledore. Apparently you were supposed to meet him at the school two weeks ago, and once more after that, but you chose not to show up to either of them."

Lockhart's smile wavered. "Oh, I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding, er—terribly sorry, didn't get your name—"

"That's Professor Stark to you." Tony batted his eyelashes. "See, I'm also teaching at Hogwarts this year, what amazing luck. We'll be the best of colleagues, yeah? Braid each other's hair, do the BFF bracelets? I can't wait to tell the rest of the staff about what kind of preferential treatment _Gilderoy Lockhart_ plans on giving his students, especially after manhandling them, _especially especially_ before term's even started."

"Oh, this isn't manhandling! Young Harry and I were having a heart-to-heart conversation—"

He saw that Harry had escaped Lockhart's death grip while he'd been stalling, and lunged for the opening.

"Yep, you're right. I'm deaf as a doornail. Bad accident involving speakers and banshees and a rock band when I was younger. Horrid, horrid accident. Too horrid to go into details. So I probably missed hearing anything about that heart-to-heart conversation you said you were having with the kid. Toodles."

They exited Flourish and Blotts without trouble when he rushed them toward the exit. "This way you won't get your picture in the paper," he told Harry as they milled about the doors. The boy was staring down at his toes.

"How'd you do that?" said one of the redheads. Ron, he thought. "That git ("Ron!" said Arthur) couldn't stop himself from talking, did you see the way his mouth moved? He could talk the ear off a portrait!"

"You didn't really have an accident with banshees, did you?" said Hermione. She sounded a little worried, and annoyed.

"No to Miss Granger's question, but I agree wholeheartedly on anything Ron has to say about him." He gave Ron a mock salute, and Hermione a wink. "My secret? Too much ego in one room. Where to next, Captain Weasley?"

Molly was casting him a look that he supposed was intended to be discreet. "Oh, we thought we'd head up to the Leaky Cauldron for some food. Just about done with shopping, but Ginny wanted to look at some love potions—"

"Mum!"

"—but it wouldn't do, would it? Mr. and Mrs. Granger, and Professor, if you'd like to stay with us for lunch—"

"Professor?" said a high, reedy voice. "Professor, you say?"

Heads turned. There was a blond boy strutting toward them, chin raised high in the air with a distinct nose that curved upward. That was a French nose if Tony had ever seen one, and with the pale, pointed face stretching into a sneer in lieu of a greeting, he was tempted to make a passing comment about an aristoshit.

"Draco Malfoy," Harry spat.

So this was the son of Lucius Malfoy. Tony supposed he should feel bad about disliking a twelve-year-old on the spot, but he was already worn out from a day of witches and wizards, a street full of screaming children, and Lockhart, because that amazing man deserved a whole category to himself.

"Professor, you're saying?"

"Uh, yes," Tony began, but Ron beat him to the punch.

"Yeah," said Ron. "You have a problem with that, Malfoy?"

"Oh, no. The announcement was all over the papers." Draco inclined his head. "You would know if you read the _Prophet,_ Weasley, but then again, does your family even have enough money in their vault for a subscription?"

Ron turned crimson in the face. Ginny was shaking behind her mother.

Tony put up his hand into a facepalm, letting out a long, slow breath that was more of an inflicted sigh. _Jesus._

"Now look here, son—" Arthur started.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here."

Just when Tony thought things couldn't get any worse, the day hit absolute rock bottom as a tall, imposing man stalked up to them all, putting a firm hand on the shoulder of Draco Malfoy.

There was only one person as to who this could be.

"Lucius," Arthur said.

Lucius Malfoy was a carbon copy of his son, sleek blond hair swept back artfully from his temples and forehead. He matched the definition of aristocrat right down to the T; a walking stick was clasped in his hand, black, and with a serpent-head handle. He probably used it to hit his servants or something. The man was _Tony's_ age, for heaven's sake.

"Arthur Weasley," he said. "Busy time at the Ministry, I hear. I hope they're paying you overtime?"

His eyes raked over Ron's secondhand books, Ginny's frayed robes, and the hole in the front of Molly's sweater. His lips twitched, Draco sneered some more, and the twins had to hold Ron back in a tight armlock.

"Obviously not." Lucius Malfoy shook his head. He reached into Ginny's new cauldron and extracted a very battered copy of _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_ , which he studied in false mortification before thrusting back at her. "Dear me, what's the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don't even pay you well for it?"

Tony had been busy composing a list of particularly nasty things to call the man when they finally met face-to-face, and he decided to use that list now. "I'm sorry, did anybody dial for an audition of _Mean Girls_ just now? Because I never heard the stage come in, and I didn't know we were doing Regina George today."

"Anthony Stark," said Malfoy.

"Just Tony Stark, _Mr._ Malfoy, because not everyone in the world is lucky enough to be born with ridiculous five syllable last names that look great on the covers of fantasy novels." Tony paused. "But you'd better be on one of those shiny sparkly vampires angst stories. Ever read one?"

"My surname is two syllables."

"Well, yeah, but it still sounds ridiculous."

Malfoy ignored him. Tony gasped. _How dare he._

Arthur was somehow speaking loud and clear through gritted teeth. "We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy."

"Obviously," said Malfoy. His gaze strayed to Hermione's parents and Hermione before returning to pin itself on Tony again, pale eyes narrowing in contempt. "The company you keep, Weasley . . . and I thought your family could sink no lower—"

Tony was already rolling up his sleeves, but like his son, Arthur beat him to it.

There was a loud clank of metal as Ginny's cauldron went flying. Arthur knocked Malfoy down onto the cobblestones, and there were fists flying; a yell of "Get him, Dad!" came from one of the twins. Molly was shrieking, passerby were craning their necks for a closer look, a throng of witches and wizards surged forward, and then—

"Break it up, gents, break it up!"

And Tony's eyes traveled up up and up, toward the face of a very large man that towered above him. Tony had plenty of occasions where he'd been forced to look up at friend and foe alike, but _this_ man was bigger than the size of . . .

_Nope, nope. Wrong memory lane._

His heart skipped twice in panic before he forced himself to relax.

The man had managed to pull apart Malfoy and Arthur. Arthur had a cut lip, but looked no worse for wear. Malfoy's sleek, shiny hair, though, was another story.

"Oh, goody," Tony said, because he really couldn't help himself. "Cinderella came back from the ball."

Malfoy's expression twisted into something darker than even utter hatred. Disentangling himself from the giant's grip, the wizard swept away from the street with his dignity less than intact, hauling his shocked clone behind him.

There was a rather thin, stretched sort of silence as everyone waited for the crowd to thin out around them. It was broken when the big man introduced himself as Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. During the two and a half months of his stay in the castle, Tony had avoided the Forbidden Forest and its surroundings like the plague (because who the hell knew what kind of monsters bred in there, gross), so they'd never had the chance to meet until now.

"Oh," said Hagrid. "Yer the new professor, eh? Should've known it. Haven' seen the likes o' yeh around these parts before."

"Foreign, as you can tell. I don't even come from Ilvermorny." Because he knew _that_ lie would bleed out fast.

They dispersed into subdued groups after that, the Weasleys and Harry heading to the Leaky Cauldron for the Floo, while Hermione begged for a chance to get some other books from the bookshop, much to the amusement of her parents (and Tony, because he knew she was going back in there to ogle Lockhart some more). Hagrid returned from wherever in Diagon he had come from, complaining about a Slug Repellent and a bad deal.

By the end of ten minutes, Tony was alone on the front steps of Flourish and Blotts with his bags hanging from his arms.

He squared his shoulders, turned on his heels, and made way for Ollivanders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, a staff meeting in which everyone tries to kill each other (gasp), and the Sorting.
> 
> Who's your favorite character in the MCU, for any Marvel fans reading out there? Apart from Tony, of course. This may or may not have to do with any references in the future.


	6. Motor Melodrama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited the Ollivanders scene into this chapter. Don't worry, I paraphrased, so it's nothing new.
> 
> And yes, BOMBARDA is one of Tony's acronyms. More will be explained . . . later.

He was down to the last roots of his patience.

"Dum-Dum."

_Beep._

"Dum-Dum, step away from that fireplace."

_Beep._

"I don't care if you made friends with it. Step away."

_Beep._

Tony stared at his bot.

He wanted to punch something. Except he couldn't, because he had on a new, shiny glove dubbed BOMBARDA that could blow holes through bricks and knock the living daylights out of people. The fact that it was more of a gauntlet than a glove didn't matter. He really didn't want to see what it was capable of doing to the walls of his bedroom, and he'd just finished redecorating.

He wriggled his fingers. Dum-Dum's arm drooped in misery.

"You know what, Dum-Dum— _holy shit, Gandalf!_ "

Bright green flames erupted in the fireplace. Dumbledore's head popped into existence on the hearth, looking quite whole and sound for a . . . head that was still attached to the body, of course. Perks of the Floo Network and all that. It was natural for wizarding households and schools to have fireplaces that doubled as a means of escape and or communication (he was _not not_ thinking about magic portals), because if a kid came knocking on his door at midnight professing murder, how would he notify the facilities?

He knew that the rest of Dumbledore was kneeling beside the fireplace in the headmaster's office, four limbs intact. The knowledge did little in the face of rising panic, though, and Tony's pulse was hammering in his ears as he forced his arm to lower to his side, breathing through flared nostrils. "What is it, Dumbles?"

Dumbledore's head had the gall to be amused. "Are you attempting to vanish the fireplace again, Anthony?"

"No!" he snapped. Then thought about it for a moment. "Not vanishing it, per se. I was attempting something more along the lines of total incineration. You're lucky I wasn't aiming hard enough."

He wagged his fingers.

Dumbledore sighed. "I told you about the dangers—"

"Yeah, yeah. Because Hogwarts is a stronghold of magic, it wouldn't react well to someone tearing apart one of its rooms, yada yada. Not that it's done anything about it." Tony cocked a thumb toward his refurbished walls, which glowed white and marble from the glow of electric flames. "That's not why you're here, though. You got something you want to say?"

"Right down to business as usual, I see." The mirth faded from Dumbledore. "Very well. There has been an accident at Kings Cross Station this late morning—"

"Wait, how big an accident?"

"Very big." Dumbledore was grim. "You will see more details in today's edition of the _Evening Prophet_ , I expect, but all members of the staff have been notified of the event. Someone has stolen a car that was parked outside the station, and used it to . . . fly."

_Fly._

The headmaster cleared his throat. "Very conspicuously."

Flying car, huh. And Tony was yet to recuperate from the effects of another existential crisis. But things like this happened almost every other day in the wizarding world, and Dumbledore wouldn't have gone as far as to tell the entire staff about it if it were an average crazy wizard behind the wheels, _especially_ when Tony made a point of yelling over anything related to the m-word.

"O-kay." He dragged the word out into two long syllables. "Do I know this someone?"

"Someone _s_ , rather, but I expect you do." There was none of the usual merriment that threaded their tête-à-têtes as Dumbledore continued, "The emergency staff meeting is due to begin in five minutes. You will be there, of course."

Tony sputtered. "But, but, I'm busy! You don't even need me there, Dumbledore. Why do I have to go?"

Some of the annoying twinkle returned to Dumbledore's eyes.

"Because, Anthony, everyone except you will be present, and I do not wish to see Minerva strangle you to death."

The head disappeared before it could listen to his indignant squawks and protests about invasion of privacy.

"Would you like me to bar Albus Dumbledore from the Floo, sir?" JARVIS asked.

"Nah," he said. "Let Dumbles have his way. Old man wouldn't be surprised if he saw me naked with a stripper."

"I am inclined to think that _no one_ would be surprised to see you naked, sir, and with _ten_ dozen strippers," said JARVIS, but by that time Tony was out of the room.

His perfect, glossy, tech-augmented room.

He'd spent the last weeks of August redecorating, and then redecorating some more when he got told off for trying to vanish his ugly-ass fireplace into the boys' bathroom. Tony and Dumbledore were both sick and tired of arranging super-secret meetings through super-secret house-elves and super-secret mimes across the super-secret lunch table, anyway, so it wasn't as bad as it sounded. Probably.

The seventh-floor corridor was bustling with artly life as he strutted along it. No portrait gave him a second glance, not that he cared. Maya's frame was glaringly empty after all of five weeks, and he and the Fat Lady were not on speaking terms.

_Beep._

"Oh, you're coming with me." Dum-Dum had followed him out of the room. "Why are you coming with me?"

_Beep._

"Moral support, huh? You're a lot like your brother."

_Beep._

Dum-Dum raised his claw and gave him a high five, which Tony returned.

Great. Minnie was going to hate him.

* * *

The staff meeting was a disaster that walked on two legs. It had greasy hair, a hooked nose, sallow skin, and was called Severus Snape.

Sprout tutted. "Another book signing, then?" Gilderoy Lockhart's seat was, of course, very empty.

"It appears so." The quill in Minerva McGonagall's hand moved at a vicious speed as it raked across pieces of crisp parchment. "He's ignoring our warnings altogether. Anthony, you're sure that you gave him the headmaster's letter?"

This was his first time at the meeting as an official attendant, but Tony was more or less acquainted with everyone in the room. Mapping a castle while babbling to yourself (in defense of his sanity, he'd been talking to JARVIS) kind of had that effect on people. The majority of them were at most concerned that they had a nutcase on the job to deal with, no doubt, but a few of them had actually looked interested in what he had to say. The moment they got close enough for a semi-decent conversation, he would uncork his stunning personality, and boom! They were his.

He had half the castle under his charms, and the other half out there wanting to put his head on a platter. It was humbling, and a lot like Sokovia.

"Positive," said Tony. He was sitting at the other end of the room, as far away from a stressed McGonagall as he could manage. Dum-Dum whirred next to him, happily oblivious. "Didn't actually see him open the envelope, though, so I'd wager he burnt them over a plate of s'mores."

McGonagall's frown deepened. He inched his chair a little more backward.

"Well," she said, voice dripping with a sarcastic drawl, "since Gilderoy did not care enough to enlighten us with his presence, we might as well commence. Albus?"

It was the first day of September, six hours away from the start of term, and the castle was smack in the middle of being stirred into a frenzy. McGonagall's bun was less fixed than usual; Sprout had dirt smeared across her cheeks, Vector had brought her abacus to the staffroom—witches coped with pressure in weird ways—and Kettleburn was counting what remained of his left-hand fingers. Even Filius Flitwick, sitting atop of a pile of pink and blue cushions, seemed more fidgety than usual. Only Snape seemed to be able to keep his normal composure intact, and that was because the man gave less than zero fucks about something as mundane as a staff meeting rather than his incredible innate zenness, Tony knew.

Tony? Tony didn't care, either. He was just less conspicuous about jamming along to AC/DC from a pod in his ear, and unless somebody caught him in the act, everyone would remain happy and ignorant.

"Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley are missing from the train," said Dumbledore.

Vector's hand dropped from her abacus. Snape leaned forward with an eager glint in his eyes.

"I've heard," the Potions professor began. "That there has been a slight altercation—"

 _Seriously,_ thought Tony. _Listen to this guy speak._

"That may or may not be related to the, ah, missing students." The man's face was smooth and neutral, but the light in his eyes betrayed more than a dash of vindictiveness. Ten thousand dashes, more like. "Two of the Gryffindors, as usual."

An eyebrow arched high into McGonagall's hairline. "And what might you be implying, Severus?"

The animosity between the Heads of Gryffindor and Slytherin was old news by now, although Tony thought that if they didn't resolve whatever issues they had with each other and kiss and make up (and that was one hell of a weird picture) Vector would throw her prized abacus across the room at them. Heck, _he_ would be facepalming if he had any less sense of self-preservation, not that he had it in plenty.

"They are breaking the Statute of Secrecy, and flouting the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry." Snape's lips twisted in displeasure. "Flying a Muggle car to school? Their conduct is irredeemable. Surely this deserves some form of punishment, no less than expulsion. Or are you playing favorites with your lions again, Minerva?"

And boy, _that_ must have struck the wrong cord, because McGonagall was looking up from her scrolls at last with a stony glare that would have cut daggers into the Hulkbuster.

Minerva McGonagall was the equivalent of a single, witchy, and older Pepper. Tony thought he might be in love.

Dumbledore jumped in before blood could splatter the walls. "Severus, the train is not due for six hours. Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley have not arrived at the school yet. We will listen to what they have to say, then decide on the punishment." His eyes were twin steely pebbles. "Minerva will be the one to make the final decision, as they are her responsibility as the Gryffindor Head of House. She will be most impartial."

Snape let out a disgruntled _hmph_ , but seemed appeased.

And maybe old Snapey was right to turn up his large, hooked nose at things like staff meetings, because the meeting dragged on for several more minutes as everyone droned on about tiny trivialities. Flitwick wanted to go over the carriage schedule one last time. Sinistra wanted to switch her Wednesday study halls with Sprout's Friday ones, could something be done within the day. Trelawney asked, raising a timid hand, if she could be excused from the start-of-term feast, as she'd seen some frightening vision of dead trees and crashed automobiles in her teacup earlier. Babbling was already hungry for dinner.

As things were wrapping up at last, Dumbledore pulled him aside.

"Anthony, a word."

Tony rose from his seat, putting out a hand to stall his bot. "Go wait in my room with your brother and sister," he said. "No, not the Great Hall, Dum-Dum, were you even listening? There are going to be kids there. They'll take you apart and mold you into a cheap cauldron, and—oh, God, never mind."

When the rest of the staff had disappeared down the hall, including Trelawney, who was trying to eavesdrop by lurking behind the doors, Dumbledore turned to face Tony. And Dum-Dum.

"You know about this car," he said. It wasn't a question.

Tony blinked. "I'm sorry?" he said in turn, putting on his best trademarked bullshitting expression. It was one thing playing dumb to Nick Fury, but a whole different matter when it concerned Dumbledore. He was keeping his fingers crossed.

Dumbledore kept his face blank in return. The old man's stare continued to bore into him.

"You know about this car," Dumbledore repeated. "Please, Anthony, tell me about it."

He couldn't.

Because _of course_ he knew about the car. It was Arthur Weasley's.

Arthur had kept true to his word by inviting Tony to tea that Sunday, four days after meeting in Diagon Alley. As Tony had nothing better to do with his time, having finished the alpha prototype of his hand-glove gauntlet, and because he felt sorry for the poor, decrepit owl that had carried the letter all the way to Hogwarts, he accepted with grace.

The Burrow was a tiny, jumbled thing built on stilted stone walls as though extra rooms had been added to it over time with zero architectural forethought whatsoever. It was painful to look at, the chickens were a nuisance, and the entirety of the grounds was smaller than his rooms at the compound. He loved it.

Molly and Arthur greeted him at the front of the yard. The children had gone up the hill for a game of Quidditch, they explained, ushering him inside, so it was just the three of them for tea. Percy was staying in his room.

Molly got up to do some cleaning when the tea had cooled and the dishes were put away. Tony took the chance to show Arthur some of his less offensive, more innocent inventions.

"Here, give it a tap with your wand." He put the red cube on the tabletop.

Tony had his own wand from Ollivanders now, walnut, phoenix feather, thirteen inches and brittle, that he went out of his way to avoid touching. Instead Dum-E and Dum-Dum had picked up the habit of brandishing it like a lightsaber while U watched over them, the perfect picture of a bemused older sister. It was pretty spot-on for a Star Wars allusion since Dark lords were an actual thing in this world, surprise surprise. That made Tony Darth Vader by default, which would have amused him to no end . . . under any other circumstances.

Because it shouldn't have been possible. Tony Stark was a genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist among a thousand other things, but he wasn't magic enough to hold a wand. Or so he thought, until the moment Ollivander handed him a stick that made him shoot sparks out of its ends.

Apparently the Reality Stone had decided to pull _another one_ over him, because when he rushed into the castle for a full body scan, JARVIS said that sir lit up in all six colors of the Infinity Stones like a deranged Christmas tree.

It explained why he'd been able to make his way around Hogwarts and Diagon without typical Muggle confusion, at least. The tiny part of Tony that hadn't lost its mind yet was dwelling in this happy place as Arthur gave the box two little taps.

The cube lit up blasting quality '80s music, which really wasn't appropriate for a house full of underage kids.

"It's a Muggle gramophone!" Arthur exclaimed.

"We call it a boombox. Or a speaker." Tony shrugged. "But, um, that's not everything it can do . . ." He pushed a button.

The red box took itself apart to be rearranged into a blue one, the sides flipping in on themselves. It was like watching somebody rearrange a Rubik's Cube in record time, and with invisible hands. "It records sounds when it's this color," Tony said, handing the cube back to Arthur. "You can play it back. Consider it a gift. It's only a prototype, but."

He didn't mention anything about the earbuds rolling in his pocket.

Arthur was grinning as though Christmas had come early. "Most excellent!" he shouted, before his voice dropped to a whisper. "And not entirely within the boundaries of the law, Professor."

"Eh, whatever. What they don't know won't hurt 'em." Tony shrugged, but his voice had dropped in volume as well. The children were gone for now, but Molly Weasley was in the next room dusting and cleaning.

Both men cast a furtive glance toward the kitchen door. _Paix._

With that danger averted, Arthur's air of exhilaration flared higher, and he gestured for Tony to follow him out of the house. "I'd like to show you one of my more ingenious modifications, if I may say so myself—yes, just around the corner—a little bit further—ah, here we are!"

In the Weasleys' garage was an old, dilapidated turquoise Ford Anglia. Tony was speechless.

Arthur's chest puffed. "Yes, yes. A beauty, isn't she?" The man was obviously mistaking his silence for something else, because he was opening the front doors of the car and showing him the baubles on the dashboard with an enthusiasm that belonged at a high school party. "I've installed an Invisibility Booster here, see, you press this little button—works wonders when you want to fly unnoticed—"

Of course, Molly Weasley chose that precise moment to come bursting out the front doors, screeching about how ashamed she was that her _husband_ was showing that monstrosity to a _professor_ , so Arthur had never told him how the magic car functioned. Not that Tony was enthusiastic about it, anyway. The Ford Anglia had been very rusty.

Tony was slowly reliving this memory in his mind as Dumbledore continued to stare at him, blue eyes unblinking.

Then a hint of something prickled across his eyebrows, and Tony slapped a hand onto his forehead. "Ouch, dammit!"

Dumbledore inclined his head. "Anthony?"

"Never mind." He rubbed his head with his hand a few more times, sliding it down so that he could cradle his chin. The stinging sensation had faded as quickly as it had come. "Why is this so important, again?"

"I would rather not see Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley expelled. Arthur and Molly would be most distraught."

"Yeah." Tony had to agree, even if he thought distraught wouldn't cover it.

The thing was, he liked the Weasleys. Arthur Weasley was clueless, gauche, and far too happy for his life to be compared with something like Tony's, but then again, Tony had been that same way about cars and motorbikes when he was seven years old. He'd built that V8 engine all on his own, then ended up being shipped off to Phillips for the effort. And the Weasleys were such a big, loving family that he didn't want to see anything changed in their dynamics, so . . .

He was turning into some sort of rescue dog now, wasn't he.

"I'm not going to admit I know who that car belongs to," he said. "God, Dumbles, at least tell me you have no real intentions of getting those boys kicked out of school? They're twelve, for crying out loud. I can live on zero diplomas, you can live on zero diplomas, they can't live on zero diplomas. It's obvious."

"It depends on why Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley chose to fly the vehicle." Dumbledore was too calm for his own damn good. "While I am assured that they would have no reason to deliberately violate the law, the story will be a different one if they admit to having committed theft of any kind."

 _Oh, so_ that _was where he was going with this._

Tony sighed. And sighed some more.

"Fine. _Fine._ I'll see what I can do."

He left the room, Dum-Dum wheeling in silence behind him.

* * *

As it turned out, Tony never managed to get there in time.

Snape had been lying in ambush next to the Great Hall since six o'clock like an evil rendition of James Bond, and dragged off Ron and Harry before Tony even figured out half of what was going on. He saw Snape return, McGonagall rise from her seat, Dumbledore trail after her, and took off sprinting toward Snape's office.

He got there just as Harry was wrapping up a ridiculous story on barriers, demented trees, and senile cars.

"We'll go and get our stuff," Ron was saying. Harry had his eyes fixed on his knees.

Tony opened the door and slipped in, leaning against the wall.

"Not yet, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore. "I must impress upon both of you the seriousness of what you have done. Not only did you trouble your peers and mislead your elders, but the Obliviators at the Ministry were called in as well to modify the memories of seven Muggles, and over a stolen piece of property—"

Tony cleared his throat. This was where he pulled the trump card.

"Actually, Headmaster," he said. "That car is mine."

Snape turned his neck so fast that Tony was surprised something didn't pop off.

"What do you mean," he hissed. "It's _yours_?"

Tony shrugged, playing at nonchalance. "It's mine. I have an affinity for cars, y'know, the red and shiny and antique ones, made a hobby out of collecting them. Still have some of them back in my, um, home in the States, even if the 105E's too rustic for my taste—" Shoot, he was rambling. "But yeah, it's mine. I used to fiddle with engines when I was younger. Grew out of it, though. You got a problem with that, Snapey?"

Snape's eyes were on the verge of bulging their ways out of their sockets. Tony had to eat his grin; he loved bullshitting people, even if his target audience wasn't Fury and co.

Ron's eyes were very much on the verge of bulging out, too, and Harry had looked up from his knees.

Dumbledore turned to face him. "Professor Stark," he said. And it was the utter emanation of _peace_ on his face that told Tony how much the old man had expected this to play out the exact way he'd planned it, the bastard. "You do realize enchanting Muggle objects is illegal in Britain."

Tony put up his hands in mock surrender. "Sorry, sorry. But yeah, I get it. If you want to report this to the MACUSA, I'm giving you the green light." Because he'd done his reading on wizarding America, like the good boy he was.

"I will do no such thing." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "You see, Anthony, there is a loophole in the law here. As long as you didn't intend to fly the vehicle when you altered it, the fact that it could would be of little consequence." A pause. "You weren't intending to fly the car, were you?"

So Dumbledore was giving him an easy out. Tony debated if he should be pissed or sullen, but he wasn't going to be _thankful_ , for God's sake. He shook his head in denial, and gave another shrug.

Dumbledore nodded. "Then I see no problem."

Snape looked thunderstruck, and more than a little off the hinges. "Professor Dumbledore, these boys have flouted the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, caused serious damage to an old and valuable tree—surely acts of this nature—"

"It will be for Professor McGonagall to decide on these boys' punishments, Severus," said Dumbledore. "They are in her House and are therefore her responsibility. I must go back to the feast, Minerva, I've got to give out a few notices. Come, Severus, there's a delicious-looking custard tart I want to sample—"

Then Snape was being dragged out of his own office (which was hilarious), leaving the boys alone with Minerva McGonagall and Tony. The woman was eyeing them like a wrathful eagle, and Tony tiptoed his way back into the quiet night corridor.

He'd waited for maybe two minutes before McGonagall was closing the door behind her. She seemed to be struggling with her words as she opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

"Quite the Gryffindor you were back there, Anthony," she said.

He gave her an impassive stare. "Sorry?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Don't give me that attitude," she said. "I know full well that Arthur Weasley owns a Muggle car that is exactly like yours, and from what I know of him he is more than willing to enchant it to fly, as well as many other things. What I do not understand is why you stepped up to take the blame."

Okay, so he hadn't given old Minnie the credit that she deserved. She was strict, severe, _and_ smart.

Tony was smitten. He was completely head over heels for her.

"You know what, Professor?" he said. "I got tricked into it. But all's well that ends well, I think."

She snorted. "I thought as much," she said, then started to leave.

"And it's Tony!" he called after her. "You sound like my dad!"

She didn't turn around once to acknowledge him as she disappeared down the corridor that led to the Great Hall.

Tony exhaled, massaging his temples with his fingertips. This day had been going on far too long and it wasn't even nine o'clock yet. He knew for a fact that his fifty-year-old body had more stamina than this, heck, he'd been pulling all-nighters since he was _eight_ , his eight-year-old body had more stamina than this, and he'd been charmed backward into thirty-eight now. Living in a castle full of kids must have some detrimental effect on health, he decided. He wondered how Dumbledore kept up.

He stalled in the hallway for a bit longer, wanting nothing more than to run back upstairs to his bots and his tools, before he made up his mind, gathered his courage, knocked on the door and entered.

Ron and Harry were in the middle of stuffing their faces with a platter full of sandwiches.

"Hey, kids," he said. "How are you holding up?"

"'ofessor!" Ron said amidst a bite of chicken and ham. The boy swallowed, paling. "Er, we're great, thanks, just a few scratches and a nasty bit of shock. And thank you for, you know, what you did back there. Dad would have been in huge trouble, and if we said otherwise we might've been brown bread at the Ministry—"

"You didn't have to," said Harry, cutting in. "Why?"

Tony blinked. "Sorry?"

"Why?" Harry said.

 _Yes,_ that voice in his head asked him. _Why?_

He found himself staring at Harry, who held an uneaten sandwich in his hands and was far too thin and far too small for a twelve-year-old. Morgan would be able to arm-wrestle him out of life and reality in a few years, and she was almost six. Would be six, but he wasn't taking the thought that far.

Harry Potter was twelve, parentless, and alone in the world.

"I don't know," said Tony. "You remind me of a kid I used to know."

Harry nodded, mollified. Ron went back to eating his sandwiches.

He was just turning around to leave when Harry spoke out once more.

"Professor Stark?"

He stopped. "Yeah?"

"You don't—you don't think I'm doing this all for a path of fame and glory, do you? To be famous?"

And Harry was looking down at his toes again after blurting it out, as if he was ashamed of even daring to ask that question. The phrase itself sounded somewhat familiar, though, and Tony scrunched up his nose, thinking back to where and when he'd first heard it . . . a path of fame and glory, fame and glory . . .

Ah. _Gilderoy._

(He was also thinking, with a slight sense of dread, what exactly Snape had said to Harry before he entered the room.)

Tony snorted. "Wow, kid, who are you kidding? I wouldn't be caught dead in a flying car, that's so . . . '60s." He pretended to mull it over a bit, putting up a finger to tap at his chin in a slow rhythm. "If you really want to make a memorable entrance, try again next year. I might have a few pointers you could use."

Harry had that strange look in his eyes again, but this time when he ducked his head the action managed to appear sheepish, not ashamed.

"Thanks, Professor."

Tony gave him a jerky nod, then exited the room.

The door clicked shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought it was odd nobody questioned who the Ford actually belonged to. Even if Harry and Ron had happened to stumble across a flying car on their own, flying it (and losing it) would qualify as theft. The MoM might not care if it was something that belonged to a Muggle, but obviously it's been enchanted somehow.
> 
> Kudos and bookmark for clear skin!


	7. Itty Bitty Munchkins

Tony's first day of classes started with a bang. Which should have been fine, since he was a sucker for dramatic entrances, except it turned out to be more than just an appropriate figure of speech.

Hermione Granger was the first person to storm inside his classroom for the second-year Muggle Tech class. She made it halfway across the room, unasked questions and scholarly enthusiasm blazing in her eyes, before she skidded to a stop like a deer caught in headlights and with a bewildered expression, actually took in the sight in front of her.

"Oh, it's you," Tony said, somewhere in the middle of dousing the dais with a miniature fire extinguisher.

"Hello, Professor," she replied, looking very confused. "Er, what happened?"

The automagic doors slid open again, and Ron and Harry stumbled inside with a towering stack of books in their arms. Ron dumped his books onto a nearby table while Harry doubled over, wheezing from exertion.

"See your redheaded friend?" Tony jerked a thumb at the two Gryffindors. "His brothers happened, that's what."

Ron frowned. "Uh, sorry?"

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Tony gave the dais a once-over and threw the mini extinguisher aside, his impromptu firefighting done for the day. It landed with a muted _thump_ on a pile of mats he loaned off Hooch earlier. It would have been easier to get someone to blast a water spell on it, but he'd decided he wasn't that desperate for magic. Yet.

"I encourage explosions," he said. "They show how much everyone's taking my class seriously. But that was the lesson I taught the fourth-year kids, not you. Like what I did to the room so far?"

Tony gestured toward the walls.

He'd stared at the bleak stone chamber assigned as his classroom for all of ten seconds before deciding to rip it apart. It now stood unrecognizable as a sleek, modern lab, the ceiling curved and high and tiled, the walls a polished grey. A whiteboard and a dozen work tables were scattered around the room. It matched the decor of his office right down to the frames, and all it had taken was a good bit of wheedling for Dumbledore to whip out building permits left and right.

Harry's mouth was rounded in a large _o_. His gaze was fixated on a display screen. "Is that magic?"

Tony shrugged. "Magic, science, magic, more science, take your pick. Took the base off a corporeal charm and realigned it. You want the details, stick around for office hours."

Hermione blinked away what remained of her initial stupor, looking like she wanted nothing more than to have those office hours right there, right now. "But I wonder, how do the spells even—oh! I almost forgot!"

She rummaged through her book bag, pulling out . . . books. Really, it should have been obvious.

She was talking in that rapid-fire way of hers, stacking the books in a neat stack atop a desk. "I wasn't sure what you had in mind for the class, Professor Stark, so we had to run to the library to look up books on science and magic. Not that there was much I found, but I thought some preparatory reading would do us wonders—"

"Miss Granger." Tony cleared his throat. "There's no preparatory reading you can do. The library isn't stocked enough."

She cast a perplexed glance back toward the door, which had slid back shut after their entrance. Realization dawned. "But the Hogwarts library is the best one in the country!" she cried. "We weren't even told to bring a textbook for class!"

He shrugged. "That's why this is an optional course. Besides, all wizard books on Muggle science are crap. I read 'em all."

Hermione gaped.

"Oh, good." Ron slid his books off the table and straight into his bag, sounding disgruntled. "She was going ballistic in the library, too. Kept saying something about how it must be a riddle, there must be something we were missing, there was no way a class like yours didn't have a textbook."

"I'm just glad I don't have to read some more," said Harry. He wore a very relieved grin.

"But aren't there some, some supplemental reading you'll assign us, Professor?" Hermione pleaded. The disbelief was bleeding out of her as she spoke, though. "We're early! May I please go through them before we begin?"

"What, really? Early, huh?" Tony drew back his shirt sleeve with a flourish, feigning shock at the numbers on his wristwatch. "That's a brownie point for you, kid, but there is no supplemental reading, either. And find a seat to sit down, you three, or else everyone else is going to be left standing."

Because a curly-haired Hufflepuff and a Ravenclaw boy were standing behind them now, too, who looked equally confused and no less astonished at the interior of the room (or maybe it was the smoking dais).

Dejected, Hermione claimed a bench. The other four followed soon after.

"Alright, kids." Tony snapped his fingers. Recovering from PTSD with PTSD, always a classic. "Seems like you're all here, so listen up."

It was just him, the three Gryffindors, the Hufflepuff and the Ravenclaw in the room. He wanted to be surprised there wasn't more, but to be fair, it was probably magical instinct for people to run screaming in the opposite direction at the very sight of him. Wizards wouldn't survive being five thousand feet within Stark Industries. Chickens.

"Welcome to Muggle Intercommunal Technology," he began. "Or MIT, but I'll skip the acronyms for the time being. You were smart enough to sign up for the course and step in through the door. Congrats on that. We'll be seeing a lot of each other over the year, so congrats on that, too. I hope I don't scare you off."

He was most certainly hoping otherwise. The less he saw of these kids, the better.

The Ravenclaw boy put up a hand. "Excuse me, Professor," he said. "This is the right class, then? One of my House prefects was complaining, she said there was no difference between the sixth-year and the first-year material."

"What's your name?"

"Terry Boot, sir."

"Uh, well. She was right to be worried, Eagle in Boots. Five years' education gone to waste is a Ravenclaw's worst nightmare, isn't it?"

There was some weak laughter that echoed from both Hermione and Terry.

Tony shrugged. "But yes, your prefect's correct, there is no difference. You're all starting off a clean slate as far as your genius professor is concerned, and he also happens to believe age is a deterrent in the fab process of learning. Repeat after him. Age is a deterrent."

It took them a few tries, but the answering murmurs were nice and clear.

He let the silence stew for a while before giving them the whole truth. "Also, I thought it was less work preparing one class instead of seven. This way I get to rehash more stuff if I feel like you're not getting it. Don't tell the grownups I said that, especially your dashing, darling, and frankly terrifying headmaster."

Hermione's mouth was a quarter inch from being unhinged.

It was mad to think that Dumbledore had wanted to make the course mandatory for first and second years. Tony just about fainted at that suggestion, because getting trapped in the same room thrice a week with preteen _and_ unwilling smart-asses was something equal to eternal torment for him. Eternal torment for anybody barring Dumbledore, since the man was so much of a masochist he'd decided to stick around the castle for decades after passing full retirement age. At least everyone knew the headmaster was batshit crazy.

When Tony's counter-plan of sitting the kids down in a giant chamber somewhere for showings of _A Space Odyssey_ and _The Terminator_ got shot down pronto—monthly book reports weren't enough of a workload to be considered educational—Dumbledore threw in the towel. Professor Stark could teach the course as an optional subject, he said, on material deemed academically appropriate, as long as there were proper lectures and proper grades given out at the end of the school year.

There were too many conditionals in that offer for his liking, but in the end Tony manned up enough to throw in his towel, too. They shook hands on it like proper gentlemen and everything. It was great, it was horrifying. Tony never wanted to be stuck in a negotiation with a wizard again.

He explained this all in quick and simple words to his small group of second years. (Except the batshit crazy part, of course. What kind of a bad language man would they think he was?)

"So I'm willing to let anyone who wants to be here enter the room," he finished. "No talent is required, no previous knowledge. Maybe some homework. To be fair, I won't grade you on the wrong answers you'll come up with."

They were staring at him with eyes that were bigger than Galleons.

"But, Professor." It was the Hufflepuff. "What in the world will we be learning?"

"Name, kid?"

"Justin Finch-Fletchley, sir."

"Reason for taking this class, Mr. Finch-Fletchley?"

"Er." The boy thought for a moment. "I'm Muggle-born. I'll be taking Muggle Studies next year, too, I think. My parents bring in tutors for me over the summer, but they want me to know a bit of everything if, uh . . ."

"If you ever have to venture out again into the Muggle world," Tony finished for him. "See? Mr. Finch-Fletchley's parents have the right idea. Smart man and woman, your parents."

Justin seemed to be stuck somewhere between pleased and affronted. "Thank you, sir?"

Tony walked toward the whiteboard and whipped out a blue marker.

"Because I'm a genius who loves research as much as he does his side projects," he said, unscrewing the marker top, "I've learned over the past few months, uh, years, I mean, that the magical community is close to being overrun by Muggle tech, and everyone remains happily blind to this development. It's my job as your instructor to teach you about these changes, and how not to end up as some clueless idiot who can't tell apart the Web and a web."

Ron made a strangled sort of noise at the back of his throat. "We're not clueless!"

"Please, Mr. Weasley, your father told me in person the other day he doesn't know what cable television is, let alone closed-circuit surveillance systems."

Tony jotted down two words on the board in bold blue letters. Down went _MUGGLE_ , down went _MAGIC._

"I know the _Prophet_ talks shit about me and my obsession with Muggles, but believe it or not, I'm not going to brainwash you into thinking that one culture is better than the other. Surprise, surprise." He did roll his eyes this time. "The majority of you will be living magic the rest of your lives, so discriminating against it would be a very stupid idea. In the case that, you know, one of you pull a Monte Cristo and this lesson comes back to bite me in the behind fourteen years later."

The marker squeaked as Tony sketched two misshapen boxes around _MUGGLE_ and _MAGIC_ , and for a moment he considered bringing up JARVIS to do the artistic labor for him. He didn't think he could deal with a kid dropping unconscious, though, and he was trying his damndest to deliver this lesson in the most harmless, "Muggle" way possible. It was the single reason why something as analog as a whiteboard dared stay in his classroom. That, and he needed a reminder that every genius needed his own box of scraps sometimes.

 _CCTV_ went in the blank column below _MUGGLE_. He tapped on it. "Somebody tell me what this does."

Hermione's hand shot up into the air. "Video surveillance, sir," she said. "They record what happens in a place and play the footage back when there's something bad happening, like an accident or burglary."

He flapped a hand at her. "Take five points for being fast and accurate."

Hermione beamed.

"Okay." Tony circled the floor, arms tucked behind his back. "Let's say . . . five or ten years from now, max, you have to Stun some Muggles because they caught you with your wand out in the middle of a spell. You Stun them, wipe their memories clean, and leave. Nobody's the wiser.

"And let's say," _squeak-squeak_ went his marker, and there was _SECURITY HAZARD_ added below _CCTV_ , "fifteen years from now, you're careless enough to make that same mistake again. Except you're not in a dark, dingy street somewhere that you could mug a man and walk free, but under a surveillance camera recording your every move. What do you do?"

Silence.

Ron's nose scrunched in thought. "Uh, blow it up?"

"The Muggle or the camera?" Ron looked terrified at the question. "Just pulling your leg, Reds, take a chill pill."

Terry had half his arm raised, fingers wiggling in uncertainty. "You could blow up the camera," he said. "And Confund whoever owns it. I'm guessing they don't spend every waking hour with their eyes glued to a lens."

"Mm." Tony added that to the list. "Ingenious, even if you're a bit young for the Confundus. Take five for Ravenclaw."

The length of the column increased at an alarming rate after that. Ron, Harry and Justin seemed content to sit back and pipe in with a suggestion every now and then, while Terry and Hermione fought it out like a pair of machine guns.

"It won't work," Hermione was saying. "They can take pictures of Earth outside from space, you know, through satellites—"

Terry threw up his hands. "Who's ever going to search a bloody satellite because a dumb Muggle couldn't remember where he was for five minutes? It happens all the time! And wizarding London is tiny!"

Hermione scowled. "Why are we even assuming this takes place in London? The Muggle could be somewhere more important than the Leaky Cauldron! Like, like Buckingham Palace, see if they don't believe what the _Queen_ says—"

As much as Tony wanted to sit back, too, and find himself a box of popcorn for a particularly illogical episode of _High School Magical_ , this was supposed to be when the responsible adult stepped in.

(Responsible. _Responsibility_. He hated the sound of that word.)

He clapped his hands twice. "Hey, kids, break it up."

Terry was red in the face. Hermione's hands were inching toward her books. Whether she meant to use them as intellectual ammunition or a handheld weapon, he would never know.

"You're both right, to an extent." Tony paused to let that sink in, then continued. "Most Muggles would wave off magic as a trick of the light. That's how minor Memory Charms work. As long as you don't try something really dumb like, let's say, blow somebody up on a street full of eyewitnesses, you could get away with pretty much anything.

"What it doesn't mean," and _squeak-squeak-squeak_ went his board marker, "is that you can ignore Muggles for being Muggles. They're smarter than the books give them credit for, and by that I mean a lot, even if the best part of the intelligence is limited to a few elites."

 _Like me,_ he meant.

"See here." _Squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak._ "At some point Muggles are bound to notice there's a pattern to their memory losses. They'll know three-quarters of these happen in areas like, uh, the street where the Leaky Cauldron is, or Kings Cross Station on September 1st. When they come in with their cameras blazing, you . . ."

He turned to switch markers for some decent color-coded emphasis, and noted with a mixture of surprise and pleasure that the whole room's unwavering attention was focused on him. Hermione was scribbling like mad on a piece of parchment, the debate with Terry shelved for later. Ron was nodding along to every word. Harry had his chin propped against the back of his hand, his face was rapt with attention.

 _Huh,_ Tony thought. It looked as if his charisma was very much in working order, after all.

Feeling one side of his mouth quirk up in a grin, he turned back to the whiteboard and resumed talking:

"So, kids, sometime in the near future, Muggles will find out exactly how much they've been missing thanks to those crappy Concealment Charms wizardkind so blindingly trusts. To save ourselves from certain disaster, I'm going to introduce you to what the US military calls the Global Positioning System, except now it'll have my last name on it . . ."

* * *

"Sir."

"Busy, JARVIS."

"Sir, there is someone at the door—"

"Busy, I said."

"Sir, she requires your immediate attention."

_"Anthony!"_

Tony was startled out of another intense brainstorming session by a voice ringing crisp and loud over the door to his office. He swiped the holographic screens away as he pushed himself up from the floor, of course he'd been lying on the floor, and rubbed both hands up and down his face to rub the fatigue from it.

"What? Who? When?" he muttered. Half his mind lingered on the list of Hogwarts alumni he'd been plowing through earlier. "What happened? Did Snape fess up his undying love for me? Was Binns finally exorcized by some higher power?"

Because it was McGonagall who was making her way through his cluster of rooms, head held high and posture immaculate. JARVIS hadn't even attempted to waylay her at the entrance. They both knew how futile it was. Ol' Minnie was a missile with feet.

"Anthony Stark," she said, looking down her nose at him. (She had to, he was still sitting on the floor.) "Kindly explain what Mr. Boot is doing in the hospital wing, bedridden by a horribly modified Muggle-Repelling Charm!"

"Who? Terry?" Tony yawned, working the cricks out of his neck. He had the perks of a de-aged body and all that, but fifty years of bad lounging to grow out of. Ow. "Kid must have taken the lesson to heart. And hello there to you too, Grievous. How'd you get in here?"

She had on that expression, the one she reserved for the pop culture references that flew straight over her head. "The door to your office was open, because there was no portrait guarding it. I've told you five times to find a new one."

"Nah. I'm sure Maya's just stuck in another frame somewhere." Despite it, his curiosity was piqued. "Did it work?"

McGonagall's entire features were pinched. "Excuse me?"

"Did it work, I mean, you said the kid's down there because of a modified charm?" Tony was pulling his screens back together in one fluid motion, summoning the footage and side memos he obviously had of his last second-year class. He was always prepared. Uncle Scar's musical number had nothing on him.

"See that? They've been talking about the point of making Muggle-borns' houses unplottable, never mind the poor delivery guys. So I handed them a bunch of magic GPSes and redirected the lot toward individual projects, told them to go wild—"

_"Individual projects?"_

And _that_ was a red light right there. He paused in the middle of accentuating a close-up of Hermione's cramped, detailed notes, and tried hard not to squirm. "They're smart kids," he managed.

McGonagall sniffed. "Filius will want a word with you, I presume."

"A word. Okay." Judging by how much Flitwick liked to talk Charms with him, Tony would be lucky to escape with the rest of the day intact. "You didn't seriously walk all up to the seventh floor to talk about a Ravenclaw, did you. Or are you here to stare at my office? I'm proud of it."

Over the past week or so, he'd added a lot of stuff to the room, including a lift table, the spray booth, several store-bought monitors he needed to take apart ASAP because they were ancient and too Muggle to work inside the castle, an Iron Man bust, another Iron Man bust, and seven display cases that were glaringly empty. Maybe putting up the second bust had been a bit overkill, but it gave a nice _je nais se quois_ to the resulting decor.

Tony was also kind of hoping that the bust was flashy enough to hide the entrance to his secondary, more experimental lab. He scooted sideways to block the red light of holographic Stunners pulsing from the chamber, where his fourteenth _Stupefy_ simulation was being conducted. By his bots.

Thankfully, McGonagall chose not to comment on his other abnormalities. "I suppose your living quarters are fine. Although they do leave me wondering where a bed would fit into this . . . mess."

Tony could tell she'd struggled to find a word as neutral as _mess_. "I sleep on the couch," he explained.

Her stare was icy. "Do you?"

He nodded, wishing that he didn't look as helpless as he felt.

"As for your other question, I was already on the floor for a quick word with the Gryffindor Quidditch captain," she said. "The Slytherin team's antics are getting out of hand. Severus refuses to restrain them."

"Quidditch, right." That was another aspect of Hogwarts he wouldn't be enjoying. Because, seriously, soccer on brooms? Tony had far better things to do with his time, which people used to weigh by solid gold. Like testing out the endurance of his new magic gauntlet, and dousing other burning pieces of furniture with a fire extinguisher because those jinxes put on one hell of a fireworks show when combined with metallurgy.

_Flying in itself, though . . ._

He filed the thought away for future reference, and tuned in to whatever McGonagall was saying.

". . . to drop by for a quick word, seeing as you had missed dinner, again. Gilderoy was asking after you."

His grin froze in place. "I'm sorry, say what?"

McGonagall's lips were curled in definite exasperation. He would know, he'd been on the receiving end more often than not. "Gilderoy Lockhart, our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," she began, the words coming slow and loud like Pepper's did whenever she was pissed as hell, "was asking after you. He planned to come up to your quarters as soon as Mr. Potter's detention was done with."

 _Shit._ "When was this?"

"Two hours ago, Anthony."

He scrambled onto his feet, out of dread than anything else. Gilderoy Lockhart talked and acted like a poster boy for dentists, but the man wouldn't understand _no_ if it hit all four of his grandparents in the face, and Tony used to have a thousand fanboys on his résumé. On other occasions he wouldn't have given a shit about it, but that man happened to live under the same roof as him. Even if it was a large, seven-story roof.

"And you're telling me all this _now_. What did he even want to talk about?"

McGonagall's mouth was thinned back into a firm line. "To offer you advice on your class, I presume."

"Say that again?" He blinked once. Then twice. "Advice?"

She snorted. "Gilderoy has taken up the hobby of . . . offering us all advice on the how we teach our classes. Apparently, he does not think the teaching methods here are up to his standard."

So, apparently, Lockhart had even less self-preservation than Tony did.

"Okay," he said. He was mussing up his hair, damn any motor oil that ended up there. "I think I'll run down to the, um, library, I've suddenly got a shitload of stuff to read."

He thought he heard McGonagall shout "Anthony, the library is closed!" over his shoulder, but he was already halfway down the seventh-floor corridor. The hour must have been later than he thought, because it was far too quiet for somewhere near the Gryffindor dorms.

"Sir," JARVIS spoke in his ear. "I could easily devise a method to seal the doors without the aid of a painting—"

Tony snorted. "Yeah, where's the fun in that? Better to leave the asshole waiting on an empty room. But," he stopped. "Where am I, JARVIS?"

He couldn't be lost. Again.

After all this time, the castle still went out of its way to make life hell for him, and its antics included—but was far from limited to—switching rails, dissolving steps, painted doorways he would run smack into and lanterns hanging upside down, just so they messed with his vestibules. By the last week of August Tony had developed the common sense to take IDITH with him wherever he went, and it was a hard-won victory.

He flipped up his glasses. Immediately, the floor was bathed in a pale blue light.

JARVIS hummed. "A stray staircase has taken you down to the second floor, sir."

"All five floors, huh? Faster than escalators, magical stairs." He squinted through the lenses. There were two blue-purple blurbs fluttering down the hall. "That's Lockhart's office is, isn't it. And Harry Potter with him."

"It appears so, sir."

Tony turned in a loose circle. Apart from Lockhart's office, the second floor seemed to be completely uninhabited. As it should be, since all it had were a couple empty classrooms and broom cabinets. He thought he saw something orange flash in the corner of his eye, but that was where the infamous girls' bathroom was—if there was something he hated more than a sentient, angry castle, it was the group of ghosts that lived in it—when suddenly, there was something hissing in his ear.

The noise came from a gigantic canvas that stretched over the expanse of maybe six feet, depicting a grassy pasture where three young bucks lay sleeping on the earth. As he watched, a small snake slithered over the first animal to edge closer to the corner of the frame. It was a tiny green thing, no thicker than the width of his pinky, and for some inexplicable reason he got the distinct feeling that he'd seen it somewhere before.

It was hissing at him.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't speak snake."

It kept up the steady stream of noise, though, and somehow managed to sound oddly frustrated.

"What's your problem? What's with the hissy fit, huh?" _Hiss hiss._ Tony stepped closer to the painting. "Except it can't be a fit if you're pitching one every five seconds. That's, like, the equivalent of my caffeine addiction. Maybe yours can be a hissy addiction, but it sounds so wrong—"

"Professor Stark?"

He almost screamed.

A small, redheaded girl was standing mere inches away from him, her face curtained by the strands of her hair. With the flaming torches on the walls casting deep shadows across her cheeks, she could have been a scene out of a horror movie. But she looked cold, lost and thoroughly miserable about this fact, and Tony had enough of a heart not to yell like a banshee at some poor kid. It helped that she was in his first-year class, too.

"Miss Weasley." _Deep, c_ _alming breaths._ "You realize this is a school that's actually serious about curfew?"

"I . . ." Ginny Weasley appeared to be at a loss for words. Her face flushed red, white, and red again before she opened her mouth and a stream of words came pouring out. "I, I'm sorry, Professor! Fred and George were so noisy, I think I wanted to get—some fresh air? but when I got out of the common room, I couldn't find my way back—"

So he wasn't the only person in the school with an unusual penchant for getting lost. He didn't know if he should be relieved or concerned, and tried a little bit of both.

"Here." He steered her with a metaphorical hand toward the other end of the corridor. "See that light? Right around that's the set of stairs that takes you up onto the next floor, got that? Can you make it that far?"

"Er—I think so."

Then they were staring at each other in silence. There was none of that talkative, assertive first year who'd argued against Colin Creevey about film usage in the girl in front of him, and after a few seconds she ducked her head to mutter a thanks and scurry down the hallway. Tony knew he retained some of that hard-to-approach, mysterious aura smart, unfamiliar adults were supposed to have, not that he knew from experience, but he'd never intended himself to be intimidating. It was an image he associated with someone like that principal from _Matilda_ , and it wasn't a good one.

Disgruntled and a little peeved, he trudged down another flight of stairs to pick the lock on the closed library doors for some secret late-night reading.

He returned to his room hours later to find his gauntlet missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One line in and I could sense that I wasn't going to be happy with this chapter. But there are things you have to write for the sake of writing (and plot development), so here we are. I couldn't put this off forever.
> 
> And YES! My laptop kicked the bucket last week and it was a disaster. RIP. Still a disaster, since my new one didn't arrive till yesterday. Hence the late update, and I'm sorry about that.
> 
> Sticking with the premise that Terry Boot is a half-blood. I wish I could've included one more girl in Hermione's class, but apart from Padma Patil we never get proper characterization on the female Ravenclaws. Terry has enough lines that I think I can write him occasionally, but not them.
> 
> Kudos and comment for your belated Hogwarts letter!


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